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Book. 


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COPBRGHT DEPOSED 













PATRICIA ELLEN 



PATRICIA ELLEN 

BY 

MARY WILTSHIRE 

ii 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 
1924 








1 


l>y*“ 

I*' 

* 4 


COPYRIGHT, 1924 

BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY, INC. 





THE PLIMPTON PRESS' NORWOOD • MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


SfP 20 74 

©CU8019 32 




To 

MY MOTHER 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Prologue . i 

Part I. The Downs. 9 

Part II. The World as Man Has Made It 109 

Part III. May-dew.197 







PROLOGUE 










PROLOGUE 

(Which really does belong to the book) 

T HERE is a fashion, a convention, a tradition; 
one or the other, sometimes all three: that when 
one weaves a story round particular places, 
when one’s dream children materialize, and live and 
move and have their being, not in a dream world, as 
sometimes happens; but in an actual house, or village, 
or countryside, or town, one should disguise the fact 
by giving names other than their own to these local¬ 
ities. There are classic precedents certainly; prece¬ 
dents in which the fanciful dream places are more real 
and better loved than the actual map-marked, geog¬ 
raphy-primer realities from which they had their 
origin. I have vague recollections of Tewkesbury, for 
example, as a wretched battle in the Wars of the 
Roses: Yorkist victory (or it may have been Lan¬ 
castrian, but I think it was Yorkist), date fourteen 
hundred and something. But could we not one and all 
have found our way up and down the old streets of 
Norton Bury: have we not stood many times in its 
mills by Severn river, and watched that broad and 
placid stream rising in its winter fury, till we trembled, 
fearing greatly that the life and prosperity of the 


3 


4 PATRICIA ELLEN 

borough would be swept away by that ever strengthen¬ 
ing agent of destruction? Did we not know the 
pinched and hunger-sunken faces that sweated for a 
living — or a starving — in those same mills, in the 
days preceding the Great Reforms? 

Still, great though the precedent be, since Avebury 
and Bristol and Cirencester suggested these lives to 
me, it is of Avebury and Bristol and Cirencester that 
I openly write. Not that any words of any present 
day ink slinger can much add to, or detract from their 
history. Places which have belonged to the world of 
men, where humanity has lived and loved and suffered, 
since the days when your first great-grandfather, and 
mine, wrapped himself in a wolf skin, and killed and 
carved his dinner with a bit of road mending material, 
are not greatly affected by one book or another. 

But I would have others see these loved hills of 
mine as I see them: I would have them fill their winter 
evenings with fancies about this old house, and that, 
as I do: I would have them store their memories with 
sudden, breathlessly arresting shafts and glimpses of 
beauty; so that when they grow itchingly tired of the 
fidgetiness of the people they work for, or the boredom 
and monotony of the material they work with, they 
may, when there comes an instant’s pause in their 
every-day occupations, summon for the refreshment 
of their weary minds and souls, some scrap of loveli¬ 
ness, some specimen of cheery humanity that they 


PROLOGUE 


5 

have heretofore encountered: and, with it before their 
eyes, find their day’s worries grow more easeful. 

Even a juicy morsel of scandal centring round some 
smug, well-kept house and garden is very helpful; it’s 
astonishing, the amount of invigoration that can be 
obtained from one’s neighbours’ little lapses. It is 
our duty to bewail our shortcomings. But it is much 
more beneficial to the figure and complexion to take 
a keen interest, from behind a discreet window curtain, 
in the goings-on of the Hyphen Smiths, next door. 

Therefore that you, my friends, may see what can 
be done with an out-of-the-way cottage, and a shop, 
and a patch of flat roof with some pots on it, I tell 
you where the places are; and just as I have told you, 
you will find them. You may not want to make a 
story of my part of the world, you may prefer Kent or 
Yorkshire, or the Black Country; but, except for the 
Stones and the Barrows round Avebury, you may find 
like spots in almost any place you look, and can play 
the game anywhere you choose. 

Only one reservation I make. You must not put 
real people in the real places where they live; because 
it is not a game then. And that brings me to another 
thing which perhaps I had better say: I do not want 
to be like Mr. Charles Dickens, who was visited by an 
irate personage, carrying a large-sized stick, and an 
intention of using it, under the impression that he was 
the original of Wackford Squeers. I do not want Mr. 


6 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


Henry Lawes, of the Red Lion at Avebury, to refuse 
indignantly to allow me to eat his excellent bread and 
butter when next I go there. I do not want to be in¬ 
undated with libel actions from proprietors of restau¬ 
rants and drapery establishments in Bristol and Ciren¬ 
cester. 

So please take notice and remember: that none of 
the people you read of in these houses do really live 
there. There is a Red Lion at Avebury, and a fine 
old house it is, with excellent refreshment for man and 
beast and motor-car; but it was never inhabited (so 
far as I know) by Sergeant-Major “ Ercherd ” 
Cooksey and his daughter. The two cottages do stand 
in their fir tree enclosure near the Devizes Road, 
about three-quarters of a mile from Darling’s stables 
at Beckhampton, and from the doors you may watch 
the slim-legged racers going out for exercise any morn¬ 
ing you like: but they have not yet been turned into 
one cottage, and I don’t think a professional colour- 
dabber has ever lived in them. 

Again: the high, narrow building, with the made- 
over commercialized Church by the side, does tower 
skywards close to the railway arch in Victoria Street, 
Bristol; and there is a view of St. Mary Redcliffe, 
from the fifth floor back, because I have been up to 
see; but the building belongs to a firm of motor engi¬ 
neers, not to a restaurant proprietor. 

The same with my draper’s shop at Cirencester and 
the house by Watermoor Church, where the younger 


PROLOGUE 


7 


of the Gideon brothers took his wife, a bride. There 
are some most attractive drapers’ shops in Cirencester 
Market Place; but mine is not among them: and as 
to who lives in the little house overlooking the fields, 
I do not know. It has never been added to, by the 
way. 

I do not say that real people do not sometimes play 
hide and seek in the pattern of my fancy weaving; but 
they are people from other places and other years than 
those of which I dream: and they are different from 
themselves too, as our friends, when they come to us in 
sleep, our brains for the time being triumphantly mas¬ 
ters of the fourth dimension, possess possibilities of 
action and speech, which have vanished in waking day¬ 
light moments, when we meet them looking for cooks, 
or going to the dentist, and they are shackled irre¬ 
trievably by the realities of time and space. 

But perhaps they would really like to be the people 
they are in dreams; so I put them in my weaving in 
that guise, and see what they look like. 


PART I 

THE DOWNS 



CHAPTER I 


T HERE exist to-day a large number of English¬ 
men between the ages of twenty-five and fifty 
— about a million and a half; or, if one reckons 
in the wives and mothers and other relatives who 
stayed there, nearly two millions — to whom the word 
“ Wiltshire ” conjures up one vision, and one vision 
only: miles of bare ground that had once been sheep 
pasture, thick with dust in the summer, thick with 
mud in the winter: rows and rows, going on for ever, 
to all appearance, of exactly similar little “ tin-roofed J> 
huts, of just the same size and shape and plan; only 
differing as to colour, which varied from red to green 
or grey, according to the contractors’ supply of paint: 
interminable parks of guns and lorries and G.S. wag¬ 
gons: bayonet dummies: rifle and shell ranges: with 
blocks of aeroplane sheds making a fringe for the 
whole. 

Most of it is swept away now, and only littered 
waste ground, strewn with oddments of galvanized 
iron in various stages of mortality, remains of Larkhill 
and Fargo and Sling Plantation and West Down, and 
many another of those spheres of tense activity that 
were once the pole star of our compasses. To the men 


ii 


12 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


who trained there, that patch of hut-covered ground, 
those areas of Salisbury Plain which lie between 
Warminster and Lavington and Amesbury, are Wilt¬ 
shire: and if one mentions anything about scenery, 
or interest, or charm in that much-abused county, 
they raise their eyebrows politely, and say they’ve 
had some. 

But away to the north of the Plain, the other side 
of the tree-sown dividing line of Pewsey Vale, with 
its tender little valleys and clear rippling streams; 
its quaint villages with their thatched half-timbered 
houses, and their wonderful old churches, lies another 
part of the hill country of Wiltshire: the Marlborough 
Downs, which has not yet been rendered prosaic and 
of a blighting monotony by tin-roofed huts. 

Higher than the Plain are the Marlborough Downs, 
rising almost to mountains in places: Tann Hill, in¬ 
deed, only needs thirty more feet to attain to the 
geographical definition. Straight across from Marl¬ 
borough to Caine the centre ridge runs, with one great 
arm stretched out towards Devizes, as though to pick 
that town from off the knee on which it sits. Another 
great ridge rises northward again almost parallel with 
the first; and then the land falls down and down and 
down, till one comes to Swindon and the level, river- 
watered pasture lands which lie away in the distance 
beyond. Between the two great ridges lie surge upon 
surge of rolling surf, solidified into grass and corn 
covered chalk; bleak; bare of trees except for the 


THE DOWNS 


13 

landmark clumps, and some patches planted and 
coaxed to grow as protection for human dwellings; 
softened only by its wealth of wild flowers. 

It is little more than fifteen miles across either way, 
this range of Downs, whether one follows the ridges, 
or goes across them; but in its barrenness, its remote¬ 
ness, its silence, it gives the impression of distance, of 
space almost illimitable. Tiny villages perch on the 
surface of that sea, miles apart, isolated from the out¬ 
side world: a foam of wheat covers much of it in sum¬ 
mer-time; but beyond a certain point not even the 
exigencies of an Agricultural Powers Bill could drive 
a plough, and the crests of the waves remain undis¬ 
turbed through the ages, since the first inhabitants of 
these hills made forts on the top of them. 

Right in the middle of this sea of rolling green, ad¬ 
vancing along any of the white streaks of road that 
intersect it, one comes upon a sudden splash of softer, 
darker green. At first sight, one receives the impres¬ 
sion that someone has planted a Japanese miniature 
garden upon a round tea-tray with a heavily-moulded 
rim; that they have set it down there on the top of the 
Downs, and that it has wedged itself firmly into the 
surrounding ground, grown and blossomed into houses 
and a Church. 

This is Avebury. 

The village divides into sections, each taking roughly 
a quarter of the tea-tray; the edge of the tray is a 
deep fosse with a high rampart outside it, part of the 


14 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


original prehistoric temple, or sacrificial circle, or bury- 
ing-place, or whatever was the original purpose of the 
groups and designs of menhirs which stood fairly in¬ 
tact until the last century: when Mr. Tom Robinson 
and others of his ilk broke most of them up for build¬ 
ing houses and repairing garden walls, thereby drawing 
down on their memories the execrations of all right- 
minded people. 

Sergeant-Major Cooksey, the landlord of the Red 
Lion, considered that a great deal of unnecessary fuss 
was made about using the old “ grey wethers ” for 
building. Folks did come making a blamed lot of 
chatter about the old stones; and one did say as there 
were once a stone serpent going to Silbury Hill, and 
t’other did say that were wrong, ’twere Overton Stones 
as Avebury were linked up with: and none on ’em 
knew for certain. For his part, he thought as a good 
comfortable cottage, as ’ud give a man and his wife 
and kids shelter and home, was a blame sight more 
use to the world than an old stone stickin’ on his beam 
ends in the middle of a field, so as neither mower nor 
reaper could get a straight swathe. 

“ Yes; but then, Father, you and I don’t understand 
about the science part of it,” said Patricia Ellen, his 
daughter. 

“Don’t want; scientists eats as good a meal as 
most folk — better than some, and pays for it same 
as the rest. That’s all that consarns the likes of us, 
my girl.” 


THE DOWNS 


IS 

They were sitting in the tea-room of the old inn. It 
was only the end of April, so that visitors were still 
a rare occurrence. Very few people care to face either 
the Beckhampton bit of road or the Monckton bit 
until summer is firmly settled in its seat, unless they 
are absolutely obliged; so that through the winter 
father and daughter expended their energies upon the 
Avebury “ regulars,” and the people, who, business 
necessitating their travelling that bitter stretch of 
road, stopped in the tree-shielded village to unfreeze 
their insides. Few could spare the time required to 
perform the same operation for their outsides: but 
Richard Cooksey kept reliable brands of whiskey, and 
Patricia Ellen could produce excellent tea or coffee at 
any hour. 

The Red Lion, in its way, is almost as much of a 
landmark as the Stones. It is not so old, admittedly; 
what were the means of refreshment offered to visitors 
in any period of the Neolithic Age is not a point de¬ 
bated by archaeologists; presumably there were hostel- 
ries of some sort. If, as some authorities aver, that 
high embankment round the village was built so that 
worshippers or spectators should miss no smallest 
gruesome detail of the sacrificial rites enacted in the 
middle, some thousands could have been accom¬ 
modated: and unless human nature has changed in¬ 
calculably, church was followed by dinner. 

Still though a puling measly infant in comparison 
with the other attractions of Avebury, the Red Lion 


i6 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


is of a respectable grey-beardedness judged by ordi¬ 
nary standards. An L-shaped, roomy building it is — 
the L being turned upside down to the road. Half 
timber work covers its front; there is a door at the 
joint of the L, and the room which juts toward the 
road at the side of the door — a long, large room, with 
a slice taken out of it for the staircase, and a bow 
window that looks as if somebody had pushed the wall 
out so far, and then was not satisfied and had pushed 
again in a different direction — this room was the 
visitors’ dining and tea-room. Beyond the tea-room, 
along the road, are stables and garage, and on the 
other side of the house, in front of the garden, was 
a village club-room—mot a modern Institute, but a 
room for the old-time “ club walks ” — standing at 
the top of a short flight of steps, with on each side of 
them what look like lumps of cats’ meat the butcher 
left there by mistake when he was flirting with the 
cook; but which resolve themselves, on closer inspec¬ 
tion, into small blocks of stone painted red (probably 
filched from the giant ones) which try to take comfort 
from the illusions that they are representations of 
the Lords of the Jungle. They may, however, plume 
themselves on the fact that there is no other animal 
like them in all His Majesty’s Dominions; and that 
visitors to Avebury who go simply as sightseers and 
are not long-haired high-brows studying the manners 
and customs of their forty-second grandparent, carry 
away with them in side-by-side compartments of their 


THE DOWNS 


17 


brains, the memory of the Stones, the Church with its 
Saxon font and stone work, and those gory-looking 
abortions sitting by the side of their club-house steps. 

Richard Cooksey had been landlord of the famous 
old inn for twenty years. He was born at Uffcott, that 
little hamlet off the Swindon Road, before one comes 
to the great drop of Wroughton Hill. Even in these 
days of road travel, when every road and by-lane from 
John o’ Groats to Land’s End, is mapped and listed 
by the ubiquitous Automobile Club, Uffcott only enters 
into consideration when anything happens to the 
Wroughton Road; and in the days of Richard Cook¬ 
sey’s childhood Uffcott was connected with the outside 
world by an occasional carrier, and a muddy little road 
down which hardy legs tramped on the rare occasions 
when their owners had business in “ Swinnun ” or 
Marlborough. The boy, son of a working bailiff, in¬ 
dustrious, thrifty, and limited in outlook, wearied 
of the sheep and the “ mangles ” and the bit of muddy 
road and the pond, and tramped his way down to the 
Barracks at Devizes, the new Barracks they were then, 
to enlist for twenty-one years’ service. He had some¬ 
where got hold of a book of travel in India; it had 
fired his restricted imagination, and on foreign service 
he would go. 

He had his wish; he saw foreign lands, and strange 
faces and customs; he served in India and South 
Africa, saw active service — or what passed to us for 
such in those peaceful, unaeroplaned and unsubma- 


i8 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


rined days — in both countries: gained his promo¬ 
tion and his C.O.’s good opinion, and finally returned 
to England and civil life with the determination to 
settle down as became a family man and pass the rest 
of his days in a respectable and well-ordered com¬ 
munity. 

He had married, in India, the maid and foster sister 
of his Colonel’s wife; a woman of great natural re¬ 
finement, who had acquired in her many wanderings 
with her mistress a considerable amount of education 
and culture. Patricia Ellen was born in India, and 
until she was ten years old never saw her own country. 
Her name was a matter of compromise between her 
two parents. Patricia was the name of the Colonel’s 
wife. Mrs. Cooksey firmly intimated that it should 
also be the name of her own daughter. Sergeant 
Cooksey, however, was of opinion that the daughter 
of plain folks should be called by a plain name. 

“ ’Tisn’t as if we were gentry folks, nor yet aren’t 
ever likely to be,” he said with the four-square com- 
monsense that was his basic possession. “We don’t 
want her to be beyond her station; and Patricia 
doesn’t sort with cooking and cleaning. Now Jane, 
or Ellen, or Sarah, like my mother-„ 

“ We’ll give her two names,” said the baby’s other 
parent; “ if she’s fine dadyfied then we’ll call her Patri¬ 
cia; and if she’s homely she shall be Ellen.” 

And to everybody but her mother she was Ellen. 

She was a serious, plain child, and she grew up into 



THE DOWNS 


19 

a serious, plain girl, physically like her father; tall, 
large-made; the facial bones prominent and strongly 
outlined; the upper lip long and straight, setting firmly 
on the lower — a type often met with in the hill vil¬ 
lages. Mentally, also, she was like him, matter-of- 
fact, orderly, capable, a very perfect Ellen; and if 
sometimes the Patricia part of her gave trouble, no one 
but herself in the twenty years of her life in Avebury 
ever suspected it. 

She was now, to all intents and purposes, landlord 
of the Red Lion. Richard Cooksey, sixty-five and 
over, had become crippled with rheumatism. He could 
stand in the bar of an evening and smoke a pipe with 
one or two other old soldiers who liked to foregather 
and hear “ Erchard’s ” views on men and things; but 
he could no longer buckle a strap on a horse, and 
“ them plaguey clicketting cars ” were beyond his 
twisted hands altogether. 

His wife had died when Ellen was seventeen; she 
was thirty now, and he wondered sometimes why she 
had never married. It did not occur to him nor to 
others who wondered the same thing, that she had 
never had the chance; that, apart from the fact that 
she was always being called upon to make “ just a 
bit of pudding ” for someone who was ill, or to help 
with “ just a bit of sewing, : ” the lunches and teas, the 
fairly frequent beds-and-breakfasts, were so entirely 
as much as her busy hands could manage, that as she 
herself put it in her clear and cheerful voice: “ I’ve got 


20 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


no time to go walking round bothering whether Tom’s 
going to like me enough to take me on, or whether I’d 
better make up to Dick, with an eye to Harry across 
the way. And as for making myself look a bit more 
attractive — when a woman’s got two or three break¬ 
fasts to get and poultry to feed and rooms to clean, if 
her hair’s brushed out and tidy, and she’s got a clean 
handkerchief, that’s as much as can be expected of her. 
If a man wants me he can find out when I’ve got a bit 
of spare time, and come here and tell me so, and I’ll 
see what I think of him. And if he doesn’t come, why, 
I’ll do very well without him.” 

Thus Patricia Ellen; very much Ellen. 

She was making out lists of requirements for her 
summer season on this April evening, preparatory to 
a day’s shopping in Devizes, and, there being no vis¬ 
itors, she could gratify her tastes, and do it in the bay 
window of the tea-room. She liked the bay window; 
one could see nearly the length of the village street 
from it, and the roads to Swindon, Marlborough and 
Devizes; and one felt linked up with other places and 
people. 

She considered her list carefully. “ Sheets we shall 
want,” she said thoughtfully: “I must have a pair of 
full size, and a pair of single; half-a-dozen pillow slips; 
two toilet covers; soap-dish and a water bottle: I 
think that’s all for the bedrooms: might get some 
curtains if I see any fairly cheap. Now — kitchen.” 

“ Dr. Bates has just gone into Jenny Masten’s,” 


THE DOWNS 21 

interposed her father, “ maybe that baby’s on the way 
at last.” 

“ Poor soul, I hope so, three weeks overdue; I’ll 
go over presently and see. Kitchen — four dinner 
plates; five cheese: I’ve told that girl Annie if she 
breaks any more she’ll have to pay for it or go. Dozen 
patty pans; nine teacups; quart kettle; egg saucepan; 
best get a new doormat for the bar, don’t you think, 
and put that one for the kitchen door? ” 

“ Here’s a gentleman coming, Ellen; doesn’t seem 
to quite know where to go. I’ll go out.” He hoisted 
himself out of his chair with a grunt and went out 
through the door leading direct from the tea-room 
to the road, re-appearing in a minute or two with a 
slight figure behind him. 

“ The gentleman would like some tea, Ellen — will 
you get it? ” 

“ I’m most awfully sorry to bother you so long after 
tea time; but I don’t know where I haven’t being walk¬ 
ing, and I really am rather fagged,” said a somewhat 
breathless voice. 

“ No trouble at all,” said Ellen Cooksey, the land¬ 
lady. “ You’d better rest in the armchair while I get 
it. Distances look much shorter than they really are 
up here, and strangers are apt to over-walk themselves 
when they first come.” 

She set about getting tea in her usual methodical 
fashion. Ellen Cooksey never hurried, never made 
two journeys where one would do, and did her work 


22 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


with a swiftness so unbustling that it gave the impres¬ 
sion of leisure; but quick as she was, the visitor was 
asleep in the chair by the time the tea was on the table. 

She took mental note of him for a minute before she 
woke him. Patricia Ellen was fairly adept at placing 
her various customers, but this was a type new to her. 
The delicate, over sensitive face, white now with 
fatigue, the nervous hands, belonged to neither archae¬ 
ologist nor excursionist that had ever come within her 
radius. The utter weariness of the relaxed figure 
touched something below the capable landlady part 
of her, and unknown to herself, the Patricia part, the 
tender passionate roots of her being, that only her 
mother had realized, began to stir. 

She stooped and touched his shoulder. 

“ Your tea, sir/’ she said, not quite in her land¬ 
lady voice. 

He blinked at her dreamily, too tired even to wonder 
at her being there. Patricia Ellen took matters into 
her own hands; poured tea, cut bread and butter; 
brought it to the armchair, all but fed him. The fact 
that he was a man and a stranger, and from the look 
of him a year or so older than herself, did not enter 
into her consideration at all: he was for the moment 
an over-tired boy who wanted mothering, and she felt 
quite capable of carrying him upstairs and putting him 
to bed if necessary. 

He revived, however, under the treatment of hot tea 


THE DOWNS 


23 

and nourishment; the fugitive colour came back to 
his face, and he roused up to thanks and a protest. 

“You’re most awfully good; no, I can wait on my¬ 
self quite well; you are not to do it any more — I am 
quite all right now, really.” He got up waveringly 
and went over to the table. Patricia Ellen called to 
some unseen person in the kitchen to boil an egg and 
bring it in. Her visitor went on to explain himself. 

“I’m doing some articles for a magazine on Wilt¬ 
shire Down scenery — illustrating them; and I got so 
worked up trying to get those hills over there by that 
monument to look even half their size on paper and 
then to get Silbury Hill with a proper background, 
that I never thought about anything till I found my 
legs were giving out. 

“ This is the most wonderful country,” he went on 
after a minute: “I feel as if I want to stay here for 
ever; and I was thinking — do you take people to 
stay? Could you put me up for a week or so? ” 

He continued, breathlessly, that Avebury was a 
good centre — the very middle of the Downs, and a 
simply priceless sketching place; and then the Stones 
— and to stay and work in a house like the Red 
Lion- 

He was getting nervously excited over it, and 
Ellen’s voice in replying might have been addressed 
to an over-strung child: 

“ You can stay here as long as you like, sir; we’ve 



24 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


nothing booked for some time yet; very few people 
come so early. If you have everything you require, 
I’ll go and see about your room.” 

She went out as her father came in, leaving him 
to arrange business details; and if the guest had 
sundry little attentions paid him not usually accorded 
to chance visitors, such as a bowl of late primroses 
on his bedroom table, and the best linen sheets on his 
bed; only Ellen knew that Patricia had done such a 
foolish thing; and Ellen did not matter. 


CHAPTER II 


T HE new visitor came down in the morning gay 
and apologetic. 

“ I don’t know what you must have thought 
of me,” he laughed; “ I was done to the world last 
night.” 

He chattered to Patricia Ellen as she served his 
breakfast. His name was Haddendon, he told her, 
Timothy Haddendon; he was a Londoner born and 
bred; he had been — still was, in fact — in a news¬ 
paper office as a reporter, and had hated it; he had 
always hoped to do something on his own. 

“ And I always wanted to do something with some 
sketching in it,” he told her. “ Oh, please, need you 
go yet? ” as Ellen Cooksey made a move to clear 
away. “ I’m simply bursting to talk to somebody; 
that’s better; ” for Ellen, the housekeeper, had done 
an unheard-of thing: put her tray down again and 
turned an interested face towards him. 

“Well, I was telling you how I came to be doing 
this sort of stunt. I’d gone down to Hampstead 
Heath one Sunday ” — the place was only a name to 
Patricia Ellen; but she nodded as if she saw its 
stretches shimmering in the heat — “ and I did some 
25 


26 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


little pencil and wash things of the people, and some 
bits of pictures as well, you know, and wrote up a 
bit of stuff to explain them, and the thing sold. Since 
then IVe done several more, and now I’ve a commis¬ 
sion from a Holiday Travel Syndicate — the biggest 
stroke of luck IVe had yet—for these Downs; and 
I’m putting in my fortnight’s holiday on it.” 

He might have added a good deal more; might have 
told of years of hack work and police court reporting 
which turned him sick to the soul; of ill-health and 
loneliness in cheap lodgings; of desperate struggles 
to make his physical inefficiency adequate to the de¬ 
mands of his brain; of a gallant and fiercely kept re¬ 
solve to be undefiled by sordid and debasing influences; 
to plant beauty in his life at whatever cost. He had 
gone without dinners many a time to get into a cheap 
seat at Queen’s Hall; he had gone without more than 
dinners to pay for evening classes at South Kensing¬ 
ton and to buy brushes and colours. 

He was quite sure, however, that nobody would 
want to hear that sort of story; but he was so over- 
flowingly happy, he must talk to somebody, and this 
kindly creature with the serious, quiet eyes, and the 
soothing voice that held just the suspicion of a drawl 
on the a’s, was the most restful being he had ever 
encountered. 

He wondered if the mother he could not remember 
would have made him feel like this, if so, he had 
missed more than he had ever dreamed. He was still 


THE DOWNS 


27 


stiff and headachy from yesterday, and he thought he 
would like to sit on the floor and put his head in her 
lap, and have her hold it with her firm strong hands. 

He gave himself a little shake; what fantastic non¬ 
sense was he letting his brain run away with? He 
must get on with his work. 

“ You won’t mind my sketching the house, will you, 
Miss Cooksey, and those fearsome beasts on the 
steps? ” 

“ Why, of course, anything you want, sir. And if 
you would like to see some of the best bits of the 
village I expect Colonel Tremlett would let you go and 
draw the Manor: and there’s Mr. Sattell’s farmhouse 
at the end — look, I’ll show you.” She took him out¬ 
side: “ Down the road, and turn round to go up to the 
Church, there’s a butcher’s shop there, you can’t mis¬ 
take the way, and then go along by the wall of the 
Manor grounds, and you come to an old house with 
a lawn and trees, and the Rennet in front of it.” 

She was the landlady again, and Haddendon missed 
something: then in a moment it was back, for Richard 
Cooksey came up from a conversation with someone 
in the roadway to tell his daughter in a gruff, moved 
voice that “ Jenny Masten died about an hour ago, 
Ellen.” 

She gave a little shocked, sorrowful cry and glanced 
at the ivy-covered cottage opposite, where Hadden¬ 
don noticed the blinds were down, her eyes filling with 
tears. 


28 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


“ Oh, the poor soul,” she said, her breath catching; 
“ the poor, poor soul; and the baby? ” 

“ The baby’s alive and like to live — ’most a pity, 
for it’s a girl, and they’re poorly off without the 
mother.” 

“Poor little maid;” and then after a minute, “I’ll 
go over and see if there’s anything they want.” 

“ I don’t think there’ll be anything. Mrs. Stock’s 
taken the baby, and Henry Masten’s wife’s come down 
to see to things there: still, you’d better go. Funeral’s 
Thursday. I just saw Parson Cox, and he told me. 
’Tis a cruel bad job, ’tis that.” 

She turned to Haddendon, crying openly. 

“ I’m so sorry to be upset like this, sir, but it is so 
sad. They had had to wait so long to be married, and 
it was only just over a year ago-” 

He murmured some sympathetic answer, went back 
for his sketching things, and then on down the vil¬ 
lage with the thought of that tearful face at the back 
of his mind. 

How different were the ways of these country people 
from anything he had experienced before! He recalled 
a chance-heard phrase in the office: “ Dean’s wife 
dead or something, and how on earth I’m going to 
get through, I don’t know; his work as well as my 
own — beastly nuisance.” While here it went with¬ 
out saying that everyone was grieved and sympathetic 
and wanting to help, because a woman had died in 
childbirth. He liked it. It was his first taste of the 



THE DOWNS 


29 

community feeling that underlies village life, and he 
liked it amazingly. 

He had never stayed out of London before, except 
for occasional boyhood’s outings to Margate or 
Brighton when his father was alive, and this wild 
open country was like a bath to his mind. To be able 
to pull up and talk to men at work in field or garden, 
without anyone taking it for granted that he had some¬ 
thing to sell, was a source of undiluted pleasure, and 
he gossiped unashamedly with all and sundry. 

In three days he was known in Avebury as the 
“ drorin’ gentleman up to the Red Lion,” and as he 
“ drored ” various children for their mothers, and cot¬ 
tages for their owners “ just like print,” and said he 
was pleased to do it, his popularity was great. Ellen 
Cooksey referred him to her father for legends of the 
countryside- 

“ Father lived about here as a boy, sir, and he can 
tell you all sorts of tales.” 

She showed him the places the Archaeological Society 
had visited when last they came: (“ They are coming 
again in June, sir; a pity you couldn’t be here.”) and 
directed him to Bishops Cannings, with its miniature 
Salisbury Cathedral, and the little steeple beside the 
big one which some original minded inhabitant had 
once suggested manuring, because he thought it had 
moved in the night and begun to grow. 

The strong, pure air, scented with thyme and cow¬ 
slips, made him sleep as he had not slept for years: 



PATRICIA ELLEN 


30 

the quietness of the life in these villages soothed his 
jangled nerves, till he began to forget that there were 
such things as police reports and murders and suicides 
and divorces: and was taking a keen interest in the 
chances of Ole Black ’Oss, or Chewton Mendip, or 
Lady Pernicketty, and other slim-legged creatures 
from “Darling’s” for the Derby and the Oaks: and 
was speculating, like everyone else, “ whether Miss 
Tremlett, up to the Manor, were really goin’ to marry 
that softy of a Cap’n Montague — a smart girl 
like ’er.” 

He was out of doors from morning till night; he 
was working at his best, and then in the evening, when 
he wended his way back to the Red Lion, there was 
Patricia Ellen. 

He had inquired, or rather pleaded, on the third 
day of his sojourn whether he mightn’t board with 
them, instead of being an ordinary hotel visitor. He 
was so tired of having meals by himself, he had 
enough of it in town; and Richard Cooksey had ac¬ 
ceded to the request. As he put it to his daughter: 
“ If he doesn’t mind being with plain folks like us, we 
needn’t; and I like the young fellow, Ellen: there’s a 
deal of a man to him underneath his whimsies and his 
clack.” 

So, in the evening, “ Erchard ” being in the bar, 
Timothy Haddendon sat in the room that was half 
kitchen, half parlour, and watched Patricia Ellen, 
and for the first time in his recollection, felt what it 


THE DOWNS 


3i 


might be like to have a home. He never remembered 
anything but lodgings; comfortable ones, certainly, 
while his father had lived; since then — he shuddered 
at the thought of what he had faced, a boy of sixteen, 
dependent on his own earnings and the proceeds of a 
hundred and fifty pounds life insurance. 

Patricia Ellen sewed and mended; attended to her 
stocks and asters under a light in the garden; planted 
sweet peas, and green peas; fed her fowls; all with 
the same orderly neatness and despatch. 

It was about half way through the second week of 
the fortnight that Timothy Haddendon began to won¬ 
der whether it might not be possible to link his life with 
this peacefulness. 

Ellen had “ stepped down street ” for an hour, and 
come in rather troubled. 

“ David Masten’s going to have the baby back,” 
she announced at supper; “ he’s got a housekeeper 
coming who is willing to look after the poor little soul, 
and David says he wants her.” 

“ Well, my girl,” this from Cooksey, “ ’tis but natu¬ 
ral the man should want to have his own child.” 

“I know; but supposing the housekeeper shouldn’t 
be nice with it? She may be quite good and able to 
do things, and yet not love the baby. She’s a 
widow-” 

“ Then she’ll likely marry David,” interposed 
Richard Cooksey, with a chuckle; “ that’s what they’re 
for, widows.” 



32 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


Ellen looked more troubled than ever. 

“ It’s bad for the baby,” said Haddendon. “ I lost 
my own mother when I was a kid, and I know what 
it means to have nobody to look after one except those 
that are paid to do it.” 

“Oh! ” said Patricia Ellen pityingly; “no wonder 

you looked-” and then stopped short and reddened 

all over her plain and pleasant face till she resembled 
a lamp globe. 

“ Looked like what? ” asked Haddendon teasingly. 

Poor Patricia Ellen had been brought up to reply 
when questioned by her elders and betters. 

“ Looked so delicate,” she answered obediently; 
“ as if you didn’t have anyone to see to you properly.” 

“ And you thought you’d like to have been there to 
take on the job yourself, eh, my girl? ” said her father 
laughing. “ She’d have done it too, sir, if she’d been 
handy; she’s a rare hand at looking after people, is 
Ellen.” 

“ Yes, I know that,” Haddendon answered rather 
quietly. He changed the subject with some abrupt¬ 
ness, and after supper went for a stroll in the soft 
spring moonlight, along the Swindon road to where 
the great bank joins it. He climbed up and sauntered 
to and fro on the broad flattened top, turning over, 
between smoke puffs, the idea that had come to him. 

He was a gentle, humble-minded soul, and the ques¬ 
tion uppermost in his mind was — even supposing he 
could ever win her to care for him, and he was very 


THE DOWNS 


33 


diffident of his powers in that respect — would it be 
fair to her? He tried to imagine Patricia Ellen in his 
lodgings in a back street off Bloomsbury, and rejected 
the idea almost with repulsion. 

He had found the Patricia compartment of her 
mind — he dwelt on the little story of her name with 
amused tenderness — and Patricia could not, must 
not be allowed to live in surroundings redolent of 
grime, and old clothes, and last week’s dinners. In¬ 
deed, he could not envision her in London at all. The 
respectable monotony of Wandsworth or Clapham was 
within his means, but that would mean a long journey 
early mornings; he was doubtful if he could do it. 
Could he, dared he make the great venture of throwing 
up the reporting, which meant a regular weekly wage, 
and a regular weekly irritation, and devote himself al¬ 
together to the art that he loved, living in the country, 
in this country, for the purpose? He stopped plan¬ 
ning, and let himself dream a minute. A cottage; it 
didn’t matter how small: some furniture, it didn’t 
matter how plain and cheap: the great hills for sur¬ 
roundings; and Patricia Ellen. 

He did not trouble to inquire of himself whether 
he had fallen in love with her — in the ordinary ac¬ 
ceptance of that much-abused phrase; he only knew 
that with every fibre of his being he clung to the 
thought of her; wanted her: her scrupulous niceness: 
her capable, comfortable hands: her soft pity for any¬ 
thing that was weakly or helpless: her simple goodness. 


34 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


He had so little to give in exchange. 

He strolled back towards the Red Lion, still think¬ 
ing. At all events he would give up the newspaper 
work; he would offer her the best that was in him, 
and that was not the best. He would leave London 
and live in the open spaces, where this one talent of 
his, the one thing he had to give, could have a chance 
to develop and mature, and he would offer that chance 
and his great longing, to Patricia, telling her honestly 
how poor the bargain was. 

The Red Lion, and the red lions, loomed on him 
at this point, and he became aware that the lights in 
the bar were extinguished, and that Richard Cooksey 
was standing in the doorway looking up the road. 

“ Ah, here you be, sir. I was just wondering 
whether you’d done a midnight flit and left your bill 
behind; or whether the highwayman’s ghost had got 
ye.” He chuckled, and Timothy laughed too, remem¬ 
bering the tale told him of the light-fingered, light- 
witted gentleman who, a century and a half ago, had 
ridden the Beckhampton to Caine road naked as he 
came into the world, and fitted the taking of a material 
and well-filled purse on to the character of a super¬ 
natural visitant from those graves of a long vanished 
race which strew the Downs. 

“ I don’t know whether it’s the highwayman’s ghost 
or what it is,” Timothy said a minute or two later, 
locking the door for the older man, whose hands were 


THE DOWNS 


35 

“plaguey bad ” that night; “ but something’s got me 
sure enough in this place, and I think I shall settle 
down somewhere round here for good and all.” 

“ Well, there’s a cottage empty,” said “ Erchard ” 
with the air of a man who makes a good joke; “ out 
t’other side of Beckhampton; loneliest spot on earth, 
and you can sit and draw from New Year to Christmas 
and nobody’ll come to interrupt.” 

“ I’ll go and look at it to-morrow,” Haddendon 
called over the stair-rail as he went up to bed; and 
Sergeant-Major Cooksey’s fat chuckle followed him 
up the staircase. 

He waylaid Patricia Ellen the next morning, and 
carried the meal tin for her as she went out to her 
fowls. 

“ Miss Cooksey, where’s this empty cottage your 
father was talking about last night? Out on the Beck¬ 
hampton road he said — have I seen it? ” 

“ Why, I expect so, Mr. Haddendon; it’s about half 
a mile the Devizes side of Darling’s where that bare 
windy piece of road is: two grey stone cottages, with 
a curious square of fir trees behind them. It’s the one 
furthest from the road that’s empty, but I don’t know 
whether they’d make much of a picture,” doubtfully; 
“ that square of fir trees, of course, is rather out of the 
way, but the cottages themselves are just ordinary.” 

“ I know where it is now,” said Timothy, “ and I 
don’t want to sketch it; I want to live in it.” 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


36 

“Mr. Haddendon! ” Patricia Ellen set down the 
fowl’s feeding trough with a bump of amazed protest. 
“ You couldn’t live there, a gentleman like you-” 

“ I’ve lived in many worse places.” 

“ It’s so out of the way, and so cold in the winter, 
and look at the distance from London, and the awk¬ 
wardness if you wanted to have your friends to stay. 
And you’d find it awfully difficult to get anyone to do 
for you there; and if you weren’t well-” 

She was flushed and wide-eyed with evil forebodings. 
Haddendon looked at her with an obstinate laugh. 

“ I can cook eggs and rashers and chops, and wash 
up, and sweep a room,” he announced; “ so if I can’t 
get a woman I’ll do without.” 

She looked more disapproving than ever. 

“ Would you mind living there? ” he asked casually. 
(Oh, but his hands were trembling as he gripped the 
meal tin, and clammy cold.) 

“I? No, of course I shouldn’t; but that’s different. 
I’m used to the country, and those cottages are quite 
comfortable. Besides a woman can do for herself, and 
look after herself so much better than a man; it isn’t 
the same thing at all.” 

Haddendon leant towards her, his face strained, his 
eyes over brilliant. 

“ Patricia,” he said, his voice eager and feverish; 
“supposing I can get the cottage, and make enough 
out of these things I’m doing to furnish it, and if by 
the end of the summer I can see my way clear to earn 




THE DOWNS 


37 


enough for two to live on, and came backwards and for¬ 
wards for you to get to know me — do you think 
there would be any chance of your feeling you could 
come and live there with me? ” 

The hurried, incoherent words ended in a gulp. 
Patricia turned to him like a mechanical doll; she 
looked at that moment more plainly, woodenly, Ellen 
than ever before in her life. Her purposeful hands 
hung limp; her face was absolutely devoid of all ex¬ 
pression except a scared amazement. Never had she 
dreamed of such a happening. 

She had no self deception as to what she felt for 
Haddendon. He was to her as a soft mist on an over 
hot and glaring day: he had brought into her circum¬ 
scribed life of plain, unbeautiful fact, of cleaning and 
cooking and mending, a dew of fancifulness, of illu¬ 
siveness, that had watered the roots of her own un¬ 
dreamed-of imagination. She knew well enough in her 
clear-sighted soul that never now would there be for 
her any Tom or Dick or Harry over the way; that 
Haddendon’s gentleness with the children who con¬ 
gregated to watch him as he sketched, his helpfulness 
to all who came within his notice, his caressing voice 
when he thanked her for any small service, the gay, 
brave way of him, and his quick courtesy; these would 
fill her heart to its uttermost limits, and waking or 
sleeping, working or resting, the memory of the thin 
face with the brilliant eyes, and the humorous one¬ 
sided twist of the mouth, would lie soft against her 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


38 

breast till her dying day. But that life should hold 
for her any future, contact with him, that he should, 
even in a moment of fleeting lunacy, desire it; still 
more, should desire her, rendered her so dumb with 
astonishment that, in local parlance, she stood “like 
a girt stook pig.” 

Dimly she became aware that the unbelievable words 
she had heard, the beseeching face opposite her, de¬ 
manded an answer; but even so, she opened her mouth 
and shut it again without accomplishing a syllable; 
and though on a third attempt she managed to jerk 
out something, it was only: “ I don’t think I take your 
meaning, Mr. Haddendon.” 

Timothy misunderstood her. 

“ Oh,” he said miserably, “ I know you might well 
be angry. I know I ought to have got things more 
settled before I asked you; but I can’t go back to 
London without knowing if I’ve got any chance at all, 
I can’t; I can’t. I’ve no business to ask you to marry 
me; no settled home, and I’m not too strong — but, 
oh, I want you, I want you so dreadfully.” 

Another pause. 

“ Patricia,” desperately, “ if I go there pretty soon, 
will you let me come and see you until September, and 
then ask you again? ” 

“ And you think,” said Patricia with a royal scorn, 
suddenly coming awake; “ that I am going to let you 
stay there by yourself until September.” 


THE DOWNS 


39 

Ellen Cooksey was no more; it mattered not one 
whit that she was tied up in a big bibbed apron, that 
her sleeves were rolled above her elbows, that her hair, 
brushed neatly back and packed into a tight fat bun, 
was blowing in tags over her face. She was Patricia, 
and a lady and beautiful, irradiated through all her 
plainness with overwhelming, quivering joy. 

“Mr. Haddendon,” she said, be-thinking herself; 
“ no, wait a minute,” for he had caught her hands with 
a little gasp. “You must think; remember, I’m not 
educated like you; I’m not clever; I don’t understand a 
lot that you talk about, and I’m not pretty, that you’d 
be proud to show me to your friends. Are you sure 
that you won’t get tired of having an ordinary sort of 
woman about you all the time? ” 

Her sincere eyes would have forced truth from a 
company promoter, Haddendon thought. He answered 
her with the honesty she craved. 

“ I am quite sure. You’re a part of this beautiful, 
ordinary world, left as God made it, without the grime 
that men have invented to spoil it; I’ve had enough 
of extraordinary things, I want every-day, kindly, 
ordinary ones; and I am very sure I want you.” 

“ Then,” said Patricia Ellen with a single grave 
directness, “ I love you very much, Mr. Haddendon, 
and I would be very glad and proud to marry you.” 

“ You know,” she said later, after an interlude dur¬ 
ing which Haddendon demonstrated that, although 


40 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


neither very big nor very strong, he was sufficiently 
both for all practical purposes: “ You know, I never 
thought of anything like that.” 

She picked up the fowl’s trough, reminded thereto 
by an impatient clucking and scratching on the other 
side of the wire netting. 

“ About here,” she explained, “ we don’t generally 
see many strangers, not enough to get friendly with 
them; so people mostly marry someone near, who has 
lived in the same kind of home, and sometimes they’ll 
go together a year or two before they are even really 
engaged? ” 

“ Do you understand that we are really engaged? ” 
Haddendon broke in gleefully. “ Really engaged; 
really engaged; I want to make a tune and dance to it. 
Really engaged, and you’re suggesting that we wait a 
year or two before we get any forrader! Why, there’s 
nothing doing. I don’t care what they do in this hob- 
nail-boots-that-me-farver-wore locality; I don’t care 
whether we’ve anything to marry on or not; we’re 
really engaged, and we’re going to live in my cottage 
near a wood, only it’s a row of fir trees — oh, you 
darling, and if you stand and blink at me like that with 
those dear solemn eyes of yours, I’ll kiss you all over 
again and the hens will be scandalized. There’s one 
thing, though,” he sobered down suddenly. “ There’s 
not to be any more of that nonsense about your not 
being my equal. My Father was a clerk, and I’m at 
present a newspaper reporter, so I’m no better than 


THE DOWNS 


4i 


you in a worldly sense; but that doesn’t enter into 
the question at all as I look at it. If I’d been the 
greatest painter of the age it would have been just the 
same; I’d have only one thought about it — that I 
owed God very humble thanks for His gift of a most 
pure and good woman, and that no worldly attainments 
would ever out-balance that. That’s all, Patricia. 
Now I’ll go and see about that cottage.” 


CHAPTER III 


P ATRICIA, I never saw such priceless people.” 

The Archaeological Society was spending a 
day at Avebury during its Midsummer meeting 
in North Wilts, and Timothy Haddendon was sup¬ 
posed to be helping Patricia Ellen with the lunch. Old 
Erchard could see to the moister part of the entertain¬ 
ment, but he could not carve. 

“ Look at that old girl on the left,” Haddendon con¬ 
tinued in an undertone, as he chopped at a pork pie. 
“ If I’d got a face like that I’d take it off and sit on 
it. I should think she’s been staring at stones ever 
since she was born.” 

“ Timothy, be quiet; they’ll hear you.” 

“-and the old bird with the fifty-seven inch 

waist: this is his third go of pie, and they’re going up 
Silbury Hill after it — he’s a brave old bird.” 

Desperate, Patricia Ellen sent him into the kitchen 
for mustard. She had already confiscated his sketch¬ 
ing block, he having dropped a sheet bearing an illus¬ 
tration of various of the Archaeologists, lightly 
garbed as Ancient Britons, watching one of their 
number — the fifty-seven inch waist gentleman — 
roasting slowly on a stone. But Timothy was past 
42 



THE DOWNS 


43 


scolding. He and she were to be married in a week, 
and as Richard Cooksey put it: “ Seeing that nobody 
in this world has ever done such a thing before, he be¬ 
ing the first inventor of the game, like, he’s naturally 
a bit past himself about it.” 

Richard had not altogether approved of the match. 
“ I’ve nothing against the young chap, Ellen; in fact, 
I like him; but I don’t like things done in a hurry, and 
I wish he was earning a fixed wage, or had got a bit 
of land. This painting’s all very well, but it’s nothing 
regular: if he was a bailiff, or a farm manager, now, 
my girl-” 

But for once in her dutiful life, my girl discovered 
an opinion of her own and held to it. She was going 
to marry Timothy Haddendon on July ist. She 
would make every arrangement for the successful car¬ 
rying on of the Red Lion. Cousin Jesse Cooksey’s 
eldest girl was of an age to go out, and a good capable 
girl: she would have her at once and start training her, 
so that she could carry on by herself in a couple of 
months: her marriage should not be until after the 
Archaeological Society’s visit at Midsummer, so she 
would be still at home for the extra work entailed by 
that event. She would take the poultry to Beck- 
hampton with her and look after it there, that that 
work should not be on the shoulders of her successor. 
She would make every arrangement she could, and 
study everyone’s convenience in every possible way, 
but she would not give up her great happiness, and 



44 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


she would not consent to a long engagement. If 
Timothy was delicate, all the more reason why she 
who was strong enough for two should start looking 
after him quickly, and not leave him in that lonely 
cottage by himself, with only Mrs. Sims next door to 
do what she had time for. If he was poor, why, she 
had never been used to extravagant ways, and a 
woman could always make a little money go further 
than a man. “ Timothy/’ with a little indulgent laugh, 
“ was not much of a hand at saving, except on his 
meals and his clothes.” 

In short, Patricia Ellen, who had at first tasted her 
cup of romance with many Thomasine searchings of 
heart, had drunk deep of the draught, and was minded 
to go on. 

She had had many misgivings. That mood of almost 
delirious bliss by the fowl-run had lasted till her lover 
returned to London two days later. They went to 
the Beckhampton cottage together. Timothy had se¬ 
cured it with very little trouble, and at a rent which 
seemed to his metropolis-bred ideas truly ridiculous, 
though Patricia Ellen was far from satisfied, and said 
she thought Mr. Beavan might have made it sixpence 
a week less without hurting himself: he knew very well 
he was lucky to get it taken off his hands. No farm 
hand with children would live there; it was too far 
from a school. Still, it was in good repair, and the 
grates were lightable, which was something. 


THE DOWNS 


'45 

“ You mundane person,” Timothy scolded her. 
“ Fancy considering grates when you’ve got that to 
look at.” 

They were standing by the edge of the road facing 
it. The great bulwark which towers from Shepherd’s 
Shore to Overbury Camp and Cherhill lay to their 
right; the crest of down which runs from Beckhamp- 
ton to Caine, to their left: turning, they could catch 
a glimpse of Silbury: at their backs, hill upon hill, 
ridge upon ridge lay piled, Ossa on Pelion, between 
them and Marlborough. All around was softest turf, 
cowslip dotted, and vivid springing green of young 
wheat; the air was full of the song of larks and the 
scent of thyme- 

“Yes,” said Patricia Ellen grimly: “and when 
you’ve lived here half a winter you’ll be thankful to 
turn your back on it and come indoors to a grate that 
will draw.” 

“ And to a wife by my hearthside who’ll be more 
welcoming than any fire,” Timothy said softly, drop¬ 
ping his cheek on her shoulder with one of the sudden 
odd caresses that held such a charm for Richard 
Cooksey’s inarticulate, undemonstrative daughter. 

“ All the same,” he added with a laugh, “ I shall 
seriously consider the advisability of calling you Ellen 
if you treat me to ideas like those.” 

“ It’s a better name for me than Patricia,” said the 
owner of it soberly. 



46 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


“ Oh, no, it isn’t.” Timothy flushed with quick, hot 
feeling. “ You are Patricia, my very great and splen¬ 
did lady, and you will never be anything else.” 

He had gone back to London the next day, and 
Patricia Ellen came to earth and took stock of herself 
with considerable depression. It would not surprise 
her if she heard no more of him; she did not think 
he was one to play with a woman intentionally, but 
what was there in her to hold a man like him? When 
he got back to London amongst his own friends, he 
would think better of it, and wonder what had taken 
him that he had made such a fool of himself. 

When his first letter arrived, the second morning 
after his departure, she was so sick with dread of what 
it might contain, that she put it in her pocket until 
she went upstairs to make her bed, so that no one 
could see her face as she read. And when her shaking 
fingers had torn the envelope, she could hardly take 
in the opening words. 

“ Sweetheart, for that is what you are; the sweetest, 
truest, goodest heart that ever lived-” 

Patricia Ellen dropped or* her knees by the bed with 
a rush of thankful tears. 

Later she read the rest of this wonderful first letter, 
and began to dare to look her joy in the face and feel 
that it was real. 

“ I am touching up my sketches and sorting them,” 
he wrote: 



THE DOWNS 


47 

“ I shall take them to the Syndicate people to¬ 
morrow and see how they like them — and then write 
to your Father; it will be something tangible to go upon 
with him, though not much, I’m afraid. I’m not a 
good match, you know, Patricia mine; I’m wondering 
how I had the cheek to ask you, but having got you, 
you are going to be kept to it, so make up your mind 
to that . . 

Other letters followed day by day. 

“ I gave my month’s notice at the office this morn¬ 
ing, also to my landlady. She is lugubrious over my 
prospects and thinks, in a Cockney twang, that them 
outlandish plices are generly unealthy; the drines is 
mostly wrong: London for ’er. 

“ The office has politely wished me success, the 
head of my part of it, at least. One or two of the fel¬ 
lows have asked me where I am going, and probably 
by this time to-morrow will have forgotten, and that’s 
all the excitement it has caused. Fancy anyone leav¬ 
ing Avebury like that, Patricia: why, the news would 
be all over the village in half an hour, and everyone 
would be coming up, or waiting for one in the street, 
to know what one’s plans were; and they would all 
be interested-” 

“ Well, that’s true,” mused Patricia Ellen; “ we do 
what we can to help each other.” 

“ My sketches are approved, and the price beyond 
my wildest dreams, more than enough for furniture, I 
believe. Lady mine, you won’t mind if we don’t have 
expensive things to start with, will you? It’s so lovely 
to be planning a home. I want to spend and spend, 



PATRICIA ELLEN 


48 

but I know I must leave something for housekeep¬ 
ing — you and me housekeeping — truly housekeeping 
— together! Oh, Patricia, I don’t feel as if I can 
wait till the first of July — bother the Archaeological! 

“ London’s so hot, Patricia, and so petrolly and 
oily. Yesterday I was going down Ludgate Hill — 
I’ll show you Ludgate Hill some day — and a motor 
’bus went wrong just by me, and let off solid chunks of 
smell; and I put my hand in my pocket, and there 
was a bit of wild thyme. I remembered I’d pulled a 
sprig the day we went to look at our cottage. 

“ Patricia, you are not to keep on hinting that things 
will not be fine enough for my liking; it hurts, dear, 
because it’s like putting us on a different footing. I’m 
your man, and you’re my woman, Patricia; what do 
outside things matter? Besides — here’s a sketch of 
my room. The armchair is covered with some black 
shiny substance that pricks; the oil-cloth on the floor 
has been patched with some of another pattern and 
colour; the same with the wall-paper; the furniture is 
mostly oddments, as you will see; and for food — well, 
1 have bacon, or what Mrs. Crupps calls ‘ sossidge,’ 
or a London egg (a commodity you have never met) 
for breakfast, and other meals have to fit in with the 
reporting as best they can. Mrs. Crupps is great on 
stuff from the ’am and beef shop. ‘ ’Taint no good 
for me to ’ave a jint and eat it cold,’ she says. ‘ I 
shouldn’t never get through it while ’twas good, but 
a slice of ’am or a bit of brawn comes in ’andy; ’tisn’t 
like anything as’ll spile with keeping ’ot.’ ” 

“ Brawn from a cooked meat shop, indeed! ” said 
Patricia Ellen wrathfully; “ I’d like to talk to that 
landlady of his! ” 


THE DOWNS 


49 


She took heart of grace; at all events she could 
care for him better than that, and if he was properly 
looked after, and had decently cooked food, and regu¬ 
lar wholesome meals, he mightn’t look so thin and 
peaked. 

She tied the letters up with blue ribbon, and put 
them in her “ lock-up ” drawer with the one or two 
she had received from her mother on the rare occa¬ 
sions when they had been separated for a day or two. 
She gave the two packets a caressing pat before she 
shut the drawer. 

“ I wish Mother could have known Timothy,” she 
thought wistfully; “ she would have loved his pictures 
so, and she could have talked to him better than I 
could. She had been about and she knew so much 
more.” 

Not for worlds would she have confessed to the blue 
ribbon, and her reply letters were models of clear, 
plain statements of fact. Haddendon laughed over 
them, his whimsical mouth more one-sided than ever, 
his eyes tender. They were so exactly what he would 
have expected of her, and he could see her so plainly, 
writing them in the bow window, with her eyes on the 
roads that led to the outside world. It was a simple, 
quiet life she described; unknowingly she infused into 
her specification-like epistles a breath of neighbour¬ 
liness dear to the heart of the man who read them. 

Details of the progress of the motherless baby over 
the way, and of how “ Father said the housekeeper 


5o 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


was coming along nicely with David, but I hope it 
isn’t true.” Excited news of the engagement of Miss 
Tremlett at the Manor, not to that Captain Montague 
after all, but to a gentleman from “Africa or Aus¬ 
tralia, or somewhere abroad,” that nobody ever 
remembered seeing; but it appeared she had met him 
away, and they had wanted to be married before, and 
Colonel Tremlett didn’t approve because the gentle¬ 
man wasn’t rich, and didn’t belong to anybody special; 
but now he had found out something wonderful about 
how to cure a dreadful fever — it must have been 
Africa he went to, because it was an African fever — 
and he was so much thought of for it, and had to read 
a paper about it before some big people in London, 
that Colonel Tremlett had said yes. 

Miss Tremlett’s engagement bulked large in more 
than one letter: “ They are to be married the week 
after us, Timothy,” and then had been superseded 
by the dreadful scandal of Mrs. Brownlow’s cook at 
the “ house with the pillars you admired so, close to 
the Red Lion,” stealing whiskey from Richard Cook¬ 
sey’s bar and getting drunk on it — but Father was 
not going to have any case brought about it; he 
thought law business always cost a great deal more 
than it was worth. 

Timothy, shut up for a whole week of glorious May 
weather, reporting a highly-spiced divorce suit that left 
both parties exactly where it found them, minus fees, 
heartily agreed with Father. 


THE DOWNS 


5i 


The apples and plums had blossomed wonderfully, 
she wrote. If only they didn’t get late frosts to spoil 
the setting of the fruit, she would be able to make 
quite a lot of jam from the tree in their cottage 
garden. Did Timothy like plum jam? Timothy, in¬ 
specting a sticky compound that announced itself as 
“ Stoneless Plum Preserve, Made from Finest Fresh 
Pulped Fruit,” laughed, and then thrilled at the 
thought of “ their ” garden. 

Patricia Ellen thought it would be better if she 
went to Swindon to buy their kitchen things; there 
were very useful shops for things of that sort in Swin¬ 
don, and it wasn’t worth while paying carriage from 
London on them; besides, it wasn’t to be expected 
that he would know about the best sorts of baking 
dishes and things like that. 

They were getting busy at the Red Lion, but Cousin 
Sarah’s girl had come over from Uffcott; she herself 
was finding time for her sewing. Father was giving 
them all the table-cloths and sheets and things of that 
sort, and she had hemmed them all and embroidered 
them with “ H.” 

She was going into Swindon next week to see about 
her clothes, but she should not buy much; better 
spend the money on warmer curtains and things to 
keep the cold out of the house; she was afraid he would 
find it bitter in the winter-little jerked out refer¬ 

ences that set his pulses beating. Well enough he un¬ 
derstood the affectionate care that lay behind her 



52 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


inarticulateness, and he sent her back three sheets of 
hot love, and imperious commands to spend her money 
on herself, which Patricia and Ellen calmly disobeyed. 

She spent much anxious thought, however, if not 
much money, on those same things. Patricia Ellen 
never varied her costumes greatly; a navy serge or 
grey tweed coat and skirt, with white silk blouses in 
the summer, striped flannel ones in the winter. She 
wished, wistfully, that she was prettier for Timothy 
to look at and wondered whether, if she had her 
clothes made “ a bit more fussy ” it would enhance 
her appearance, and make her more to be desired of 
men. She studied fashion books with a worried brow; 
but came regretfully to the conclusion that the frilli- 
nesses therein depicted on incredibly slim and elegant 
young females would not have a good effect on her 
own sturdy figure, and she had better stick to plain 
grey tweed. 

Then on her last day’s shopping in Swindon, the day 
before Timothy came down, she saw in a window in 
Regent Street — that thoroughfare beloved of the 
“ Works,” whither she had gone in search of kitchen 
utensils — some flowered muslin tea aprons. They 
were marked “ A Bargain 3/3I ” — and though 
ashamed of her extravagance, conscience-stricken over 
the thought of the saucepans she could have purchased 
with the money, she bought four of them with reckless 
determination. She would have one thing like the 
ladies in the fashion books, at any rate. She confessed 


THE DOWNS 


53 


them to Timothy three days later, and wondered why 
he suddenly turned and kissed her, admiring them in 
a not too steady voice, and seeming not at all impressed 
by the enormity of spending thirteen shillings and 
threepence on unnecessary personal adornment. 

The Archaeological lunch drew to a close, and 
Richard Cooksey pocketed his charges with an air of 
benevolence for Science. After all, if people chose to 
pay two and sixpence each for a meal because they 
wanted to climb a hill after it, and sit on damp grass 
in a wind, and talk like the wise heads they weren’t 
about the old Stones — why, there might be some good 
in Science — for them as weren’t scientists. “ And 
I wouldn’t mind betting,” he added with one of his 
fat chuckles, “ that for some of ’em, at any rate, the 
lunch is the bit of the day they really most enjoy, if 
they’d but own up to the truth of it.” 

Timothy went with the party in the afternoon. In 
the morning they had improved their minds in the vil¬ 
lage; visited the Church, and pointed out to each 
other the Saxon window heads; walked round the 
three quarters of the circular rampart that still remain, 
and listened to learned disquisitions on the Stones; 
for all of which Timothy cared not at all. One couldn’t 
sketch anything except some of the faces of the com¬ 
pany and they might catch him doing that and be 
snappy in their tempers in consequence. He mightn’t 
be so enlightened as to the exact date b.c. of each 
separate stone, but he was sure he loved the village a 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


54 

great deal better than they did; and as for the Church, 
what did it matter whether it was Saxon, or Cubist, or 
Government Housing Scheme, Style B — when he was 
going to be married there next week? 

But in the afternoon they were going to trace out 
the supposed original design of this Cathedral of the 
Stone Age, and also visit the old British fortifications, 
and re-live, as far as it was archaeologically possible, 
the struggles and hopes and fears of that long past 
bitter warfare. Out on the hills there was scope for 
a man’s joy; and so long as Patricia Ellen had told 
him plainly that for the present she could give him 
neither eyes, ears, nor tongue, for they were all coming 
back to tea, he might as well spend an afternoon that 
promised at all events much future material for 
sketches. 

He followed it out in his mind with vivid interest. 
What a subject! Even if one thought of the first 
strife against the Romans; bitter enough and sad 
enough, yet with the redeeming feature that it meant 
the triumph of order, of organized social law, over a 
primitive and unprogressive barbarism. But the 
second warfare, when those last and worst equipped 
children of a dying civilization fought their desperate 
and hopeless fight for homes and faith and land against 
the fierce invader, the glance of whose greedy eyes they 
had themselves first invited; battling on till their very 
bones perished from off the face of the earth, and the 
land that was once theirs knows them only by a few 


THE DOWNS 


55 

grass-grown earth works and some distorted names — 
truly, that was a subject to fire the blood. 

Timothy busied himself over the paintable possi¬ 
bilities. It would have to be water colour, nothing 
else would give exactly the blueness and thinness of 
those distances, and the desolation of the long aban¬ 
doned camps, and it was his favourite medium, any 
way. If he could do a series, call them the “ End of 
a Lost Cause,” or something of that sort, and just put 
the name of the place in each, they might sell and, at 
all events, the doing would be heavenly. He could 
work at some paying stuff along with it, perhaps. He 
would see, after Next Week; he couldn’t occupy his 
mind long with anything but Next Week, at present. 

And Next Week, they were married. 


CHAPTER IV 


T HEY were very happy. 

They gave no name to the cottage with the fir 
trees by the Beckhampton road; it was just 

home. 

“ I’m not going to have it called The Nook, or The 
Nest, or anything of that sort,” said Timothy. 
“ There are about two million Nooks and Nests in 
England now, and the people who live in one might 
just as well live in all the others. The Beckhampton 
road isn’t numbered i to 500, odds one side, evens the 
other; so we’ll tell the postman where we live, and 
leave it at that. It’s home, Patricia, and that’s the 
only name that would mean anything, for I’ve never 
had a home before: but I’m not going to advertise that 
feeling to all and sundry.” 

They had not a great deal of money. Timothy 
Haddendon’s work did not, in his lifetime, command 
big prices; he did his series of tombstones for the 
Ancient Britons, as he irreverently called them: they 
were marvels of delicate colouring, cloud shadows on 
fields of burnished wheat, sunset and the evening mists 
of spring twilight, long raking hills with their relent¬ 
less outlines softened and blurred by a veil of rain; 
56 


THE DOWNS 


57 

and they were accepted for exhibition by one of the 
more eclectic of the London galleries and sold, though 
for a modest sum. Connoisseurs and far-sighted art 
critics hailed their creator as the coming genius; the 
Whistler of water colour; but the general public was 
intent at that time on six feet square splodges of red 
and green and blue, which the initiated, screwing up 
their eyes at them from the end of a long room, de¬ 
clared represented a church, or a lake, or a woman 
dancing, or anything else their imagination suggested; 
and the fineness and purity of outline of Timothy’s 
work was inimical to its popularity. He continued to 
receive commissions for illustrations, and from that 
source obtained a steady, though not a large income. 

Patricia Ellen cooked. She always was and always 
would be a Martha woman, and although no one could 
say that she was “ cumbered ” with much serving, her 
affection would ever manifest itself by abundant wait¬ 
ing upon its object. To give Timothy meals that 
should take away his peakiness; to look after his 
clothes; so to care for the artist friends his pictures 
brought him that though they placed her as unorna¬ 
mental, they could not but acknowledge her utility — 
these constituted her happiness. 

After the second year of the marriage they had a 
good many visitors. Mrs. Sims left the cottage next 
door, and Timothy took the two and combined them. 
They had therefore more space, there was a spare 
room, and a room for a studio, and as Timothy said: 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


58 

“ It really is rather jolly to be all by ourselves in our 
forest like this.” 

Patricia Ellen was a little nervous of the visitors 
at first, but eventually she became good friends with 
them. They were of the younger set, mostly; men, 
who, like Timothy, were trying to break away from 
the established splodginess, and get on, or back, to 
clearer, purer drawing; and they found their friend’s 
wife pleasing. Her views on art were so laughable as 
to be almost lovable. Patricia Ellen knew with a calm 
sureness that her husband’s pictures combined all 
the excellencies of all the artists who had ever lived 
since the days when King Solomon commissioned 
craftsmen, cunning in design, to decorate him a 
Temple; but apart from his productions, her taste lay 
in the direction of the Presentation Plates of Pears’ 
Christmas Annual. 

“ I daresay,” she said to one of the visitors, one 
Herbert Loder, an art critic of repute who had invited 
himself down to Timothy’s awe-struck delight; “ I 
daresay that if I lived in a big town I should like some¬ 
thing different. I can quite understand people who 
pass all their days among houses liking to have pic¬ 
tures of hills and fields and things; but I’ve only got 
to go to the door or the window to look at all the 
fields I want; and those Pears’ Annual Pictures are 
nice and bright and cheerful, and there isn’t anything 
I can’t understand in them.” 


THE DOWNS 


59 

“ But the subjects of them, Mrs. Haddendon,” 
Loder protested, horrified. 

“ Well, I don’t know. Of course Timothy’s told 
me why they aren’t good really; he’s taught me a lot 
about pictures, and I suppose you don’t often see 
kittens quite so fluffy, or children so fat and rosy, and 
wearing clothes like that when they’re just playing; 
but still, they would be very nice if you did see them.” 

Loder was silent. He thought of the perfectly 
cooked meals he had consumed during his visit; of the 
careful attention paid to his wants, his likes and dis¬ 
likes; of the kindliness and good humour that seemed 
to meet him on the very threshold of the little house, 
and being a man of considerable intuition, he began 
dimly to comprehend her point of view. After all, she 
was right so far; with that panorama before one’s eyes 
the finest landscape ever hung would seem dull and 
monotonous. There were plenty of women who could 
talk art, talk and discuss the points of a picture, there 
were not many who could so perfectly fill all the needs 
and affections of a painter. An intellectual, stimu¬ 
lating woman would probably have made Haddendon, 
nervy, excitable fellow that he was, take to drugs or 
drink; whereas, now he was eating and sleeping like 
a normal human being, and exhaling contentment with 
every breath. If she liked her fat babies and fluffy 
kittens, bless her cushiony heart, why shouldn’t she 
have them? 


6o 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


After his return to London, two days later, he pur¬ 
chased an engraving of that exquisite cradle song on 
paper, Charderon’s “ Sommeil” and sent it to her; 
and though Patricia Ellen privately did not rank it 
quite so high as “ Blind Man’s Bluff,” or “ Grandpa’s 
Darling ” — Loder had been unable to obtain a repro¬ 
duction in colour — she liked it greatly, and was up¬ 
lifted with pride that so exalted a person should send 
her a present. 

Timothy kept his word, and showed her Ludgate 
Hill. They went up to town for a day or two each time 
he had pictures on view; but her holidays in London 
were not quite an unmixed enjoyment. She was 
greatly impressed at being able to see the Tower and 
other places that she had learnt about in history, and 
Buckingham Palace where the King lived; while on 
one occasion the Fates were kind enough to arrange 
that their Majesties should be driving out when she 
could see them, a delight on which she lived for weeks. 
But the crowds and the noise of the traffic bewildered 
her, and street crossings were a nightmare. The motor 
’buses, too, were not friendly; they did not pull up 
and wait for you to get in or out, like the Swindon 
to Devizes one that went through Avebury, and the 
conductors did not get out and help you down with 
your parcels. And then, while there seemed so much 
money and gaiety, some were so dreadfully poor. She 
had, of course, read in the papers about the poverty, 
and circular appeals would come about Christmas time 


THE DOWNS 


61 


for St. Giles’ Christmas Mission and Dr. Barnardo’s 
Homes and the Waifs and Strays, and her father gen¬ 
erally sent a little money in response; but to see a 
woman crouching under the trees in Bloomsbury 
Square, drenched and ragged, with a skeleton baby 
at her breast, while within a few yards a stream of 
taxis bore burdens of silk and jewels to theatre suppers 
and receptions — Patricia Ellen turned sick and cold 
with horror. 

One great enjoyment she had on these visits. 
Timothy always took her to a Sunday concert at 
Queen’s Hall. She had never heard a “ band ” before, 
she said; not a real band like this, with violins; they 
had a brass band always for the Flower Show at Ave¬ 
bury — quite a good one, and once or twice when she 
had been in Devizes she had heard the Barracks band 
playing for a military funeral. But this great mass 
of sound rising and falling was beyond anything her 
imagination had ever conceived, and she was thrilled 
to tears with the wonder of it. The only thing she had 
ever heard like it, she said, was the wind when the 
gales were bad in the winter; only that was terrifying 
and this was so lovely and sweet. 

She was also much impressed by the great London 
churches: St. Paul’s; Westminster Abbey; but service 
there didn’t seem quite like Church, somehow. It was 
so funny not to know the clergyman and not to stop 
and talk to folks as you came out. Timothy suppressed 
a smile, remembering Evensong at Avebury; none the 


62 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


less, he admitted that there was a certain charm in 
kneeling to worship amongst people whom one knew 
and liked. 

Patricia Ellen had been a little troubled over his 
religious views when they were first married. Timothy 
had not been very sure of the necessity of going to 
Church; had not been at all convinced of the superi¬ 
ority of Church over Chapel. Patricia Ellen always 
went to Church. Sergeant-Major Cooksey continued 
his parade habits with military regularity. She could 
not always manage the morning, especially in the sum¬ 
mer, or if she was short of help in the kitchen; but she 
always went on Sunday evenings. She didn’t much 
hold with Chapel: not but what many of the dissenting 
people were very good and kind, but she had always 
been used to Church ways and she was sure it was the 
right thing to do. After she was married the distance 
made the morning service out of the question; there 
would be no dinner if she went, but she continued her 
evening attendance with strictness, and Timothy went 
with her when he found that it was a real grief to her 
if he did not. He laughed at himself a little for doing 
it; but after all, it did no harm; and if his conception 
of the Deity was not that of a Being Who expected 
him to sit Sunday by Sunday, and listen to the wander¬ 
ings of the Avebury choir, and the laboriously com¬ 
piled discourses of good Mr. Cox, who was far more in 
his element giving his parishioners kindly sympathy 
and help in their homes than in pointing out their 


THE DOWNS 


63 

deficiencies from the pulpit, he did most certainly 
believe in a God of Love Who had given him all this 
beautiful world of hill and sky to live in, and had 
crowned the gift by bestowing on him a Patricia; and 
if it gave her any pleasure, why, he would go to the 
morning service as well. 

Just as the second year of their married life drew to 
a close, a real sorrow came to both of them: Richard 
Cooksey died, quite suddenly, of heart failure. 
Timothy mourned almost as much as Patricia; he had 
grown very fond of the old man, giving to his unswerv¬ 
ing uprightness and straight dealing the admiration 
that was their due. Avebury followed him to his grave 
with a genuine sense of loss. “ The Red Lion wouldn’t 
never be the same wi’out Erchard,” the village said; 
and the regular frequenters gathered at the bar the 
night of his funeral, with an air of chastened enjoy¬ 
ment, to talk over Erchard’s many good points, and to 
lament that there was no son to take on the Red Lion 
after him. 

“ The darter, now, she’d a done well if she ’adn’t 
a married,” said a wheezy old voice. “ She cud a had 
a man in fer the bar like, and she cud a managed 
luvly.” 

“Yes, I don’t disbelieve you; she wor a good sen¬ 
sible girl, wer Ellen Cooksey.” 

“ I wonner now, what he’ve a left her; must a had 
a tidy wad laid by, Erchard must; purty good dab in 
the hand she’ll hev; well, she’ve earned it; she wor a 


64 PATRICIA ELLEN 

good darter, she wor; but ’er’ll hev a purty good dab 
arl the same.” 

But she did not have a purty good dab. Richard 
had never been communicative over his affairs, and his 
daughter had very little idea of his financial position; 
but they found, on settling up matters, that most of his 
spare money had gone until some five years previously 
to support the widow and family of a fellow N.C.O. 
who had been fatally hurt in a street row in India 
when they were young men there together. “ He took 
the knife that was meant for me,” so ran the short ex¬ 
planatory letter enclosed in his will, “ and I promised 
him before he died that his wife and children should 
fare as well as mine did. Your mother knew and ap¬ 
proved, and although it means smaller leavings for you, 
my girl, I know you wouldn’t be the one to profit by 
a man’s going back on his chum. There’s no call for 
you to do aught now. The wife died seven years since, 
and the invalid child that was born two days after her 
father was killed, two years later, so my debt ended; 
but I don’t think you’ll blame me, Ellen.” 

Ellen did not, nor did her husband. Money, indeed, 
or the lack of it, weighed on the latter very lightly; 
there were so many more important things. He had 
had some disillusionments in country life; it was not 
all so rose-coloured as it looked on a first acquaintance. 
Details of the breeding and training of animals sick¬ 
ened him; brutality and lust could be found in the 
district, and that without far searching. None the less, 


THE DOWNS 


65 

the general trend of life was kindly. Was anyone ill 
or in trouble, help was forthcoming in abundance; 
there was never need to ask more than once; feeding 
the hungry and clothing the naked, or such near ap¬ 
proaches as poverty and disease ever brought to village 
experience, were not merely regarded as Christian 
duties — for someone else — but as necessary and 
integral parts of daily life. Cruelty and vice, though 
they existed, were expected to keep themselves 
decently out of the way. They did not flaunt in best 
clothes before the face of all mankind. The village 
policeman was mainly concerned with the various sorts, 
sizes and conditions of licences that a paternal gov¬ 
ernment considers essential for the well-being of its 
people; varying his duties by keeping order at football 
matches and athletic sports. Tragedies there were, 
but they came, as rule, from the hand of Nature; 
tragedies of birth pangs and death pangs, not of false 
faith and crime. The population attended school, mar¬ 
ried and gave in marriage, begat children and passed 
to its last sleep mainly in an orthodox and law abiding 
fashion. 

Timothy asked no more than to do likewise. Apart 
from the fact that he worked with brushes for a living 
instead of breeding sheep or growing corn, he desired 
no different life from that around him. He had never 
entered the young artist world of London, or he might 
have clung to its gay freedom; but as things were, all 
he wished was that when the westward journey came 


66 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


for him, he might look back, even as his neighbours, 
on a life’s work well and truly done; with an easing 
given to stumblers whenever it lay in his power, and 
an honest account rendered to all with whom his deal¬ 
ings lay. 

Thus the third year of married life drew to a close 
of quiet happiness, and the third wedding anniversary 
came and went in summer glory; while with the ripen¬ 
ing and fruition of the year came the ripening and 
fruition of their joy in each other. 

It was early in September that Patricia Ellen paid 
a visit to old Dr. Bates in Avebury and came back 
with her eyes misty and glowing; but it was not till 
a fortnight later that Timothy knew anything about 
it. He had a commission for a water colour — a 
finished “ picture ” water colour — of Bishops Can¬ 
nings Church, and had been down once or twice to 
take pencil studies of mouldings and architecture, 
while waiting for the particular light he desired for 
colour. It came; a day of softest purple and silver 
gilt, with the sun shining from a sky of misty blue; 
everything wrapped in a light gossamer veil; not a day 
for painting distances, except as a hazy blur of back¬ 
ground, but for buildings and things near by, an at¬ 
mosphere of magic. Timothy started off hot-footed: 
he would try three lights, morning, early afternoon and 
towards six o’clock, and then work from whichever 
came out best, and- 

“ Couldn’t you come down by the afternoon ’bus, 



THE DOWNS 


67 

Patricia, and bring the thermos and something to eat, 
and then we’d walk back later and get the sunset over 
the hills? ” 

Patricia thought she could, and arrived accordingly 
about 3:30 to find her husband at the far corner of the 
churchyard sketching for dear life. 

“ Can’t talk, lady mine,” he greeted her without 
looking up; “ look at the light on those elms and on the 
spire; it will be different in ten minutes.” 

Patricia Ellen sat down on the grass and took out 
some sewing. She had been with him before in times 
of desperation when the light was changing, and knew 
that woe would betide the unfortunate being who dared 
to interrupt. Moreover, apart from the fact that she 
liked to watch the blobs of colour going into place to 
make the blotty-looking whole that formed the colour 
notes for the finished picture, she had other things to 
think about, and did not want to talk; she was not, 
indeed, a talkative woman. 

As the church clock struck four, Timothy dabbed 
his brushes on the grass and shook himself. “ Done,” 
he said triumphantly; “ now we’ll have tea, you dear 
Patience on a Monument, and then one more, and then 
home.” 

Patricia Ellen decided that she would tell him on the 
way back. She was a little nervous about it, which was 
why she had postponed the communication. Timothy 
was fond of children and clever with them; but 
whether he would like a baby always in the house she 


68 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


did not know, she hoped he would not mind, she was 
so very glad about it herself. There was a place on the 
way home; the rise of the next hill after one had 
climbed from Cannings village to the main road, where, 
looking back, one could see through a gap in the near 
hills, as in a frame, the stretch of wooded valley that 
formed the end of Pewsey Vale; and beyond it, rising 
up again, the first ridge of Salisbury Plain. Timothy 
always stopped there to look at the view; she would 
tell him then. 

And on the way home, at that exact spot, Timothy 
did stop and turn to look at the view, and she told him. 

He stood extraordinarily still for a minute; so still 
that Patricia Ellen felt rather damped. She had not 
expected exuberance, but he might say something. 

“ Timothy,” she began again rather hesitatingly. 
He turned round then, and she realized that he was 
dumb indeed, but dumb with joy; his eyes were full of 
tears; he was gulping spasmodically. But in an in¬ 
stant the revulsion came; the portable easel was flung 
on one side, the case which held his colour box and the 
three precious studies, on the other; he was white and 
red by turns, gripping her hands, and smothering her 
with kisses, pouring out a flood of stammering speech. 

“ And oh, Patricia, we’ll love it so, the little thing. 
Do you know, the other day that little baby girl of 
Mrs. Herber’s, down in Avebury, tumbled over a stone 
just by me, and I picked her up, such a little soft thing. 


THE DOWNS 69 

What it will be like to cuddle a baby of our own! 
When will it come, Patricia? ” 

“ May,” answered Patricia Ellen, “ the middle of 
the month. You know, Timothy ” — she felt she 
ought to prepare him for some disappointment — “ it 
may not always be soft and cuddley; sometimes babies 
are very cross and fretful, and cry and — oh, Timothy , 
your sketches! ” She dived for them and, ascertain¬ 
ing their safety, packed them carefully, refusing to 
allow him to carry the case again. 

“ I suppose I am a little daft,” he said, as they 
passed the cluster of farm buildings, backed by tree 
clumps, which is called The Baltic for some unknown 
reason: “ but ever since I was a tiny boy I have always 
thought and studied over how I would look after a 
child of my own. I think I must have been rather a 
lonely little chap; my Father never cared greatly about 
me; I don’t wonder at it altogether. I lived when my 
Mother died, you see, and he never quite got over it: 
so I used to make a game to myself of having a little 
boy of my own and playing with him. And when I 
was older, and went to a boys’ school, though of course 
I should have been ragged from January to December 
if I had ever spoken of it, I always, when I was feeling 
a bit dull, used to plan out what my home was going 
to be when I had one. Sometimes there would be a 
baby boy, sometimes a baby girl, but always one or 
the other. And now it’s really coming true.” 


70 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


“ Didn’t anybody look after you, or take any trouble 
over you? ” asked Patricia Ellen fiercely. (She would 
like to talk to those people and tell them exactly what 
she thought of them!) 

“ I don’t think they did much. I wasn’t good at 
games, so I wasn’t popular at school; and then, as we 
always lived in lodgings, I couldn’t ask boys to come 
and see me. We had no garden or play-room to go in, 
so I couldn’t make any friends. It wasn’t anybody’s 
fault exactly; it just happened like it; but it shan’t 
happen to our baby, Patricia.” 

A little further on — “ Patricia, will it be all right 
for you? I never thought of that, I was so glad; but 
— my dear — my Mother died! ” He stopped short, 
gripping her arm. “ Patricia, it couldn’t — you 
couldn’t-” 

“ Now, Timothy,” she said in her smoothingest of 
smoothing-down voices; “ don’t take on like that; I’m 
about as strong as any living woman could be, and I’m 
not going to die of that or anything else yet awhile. 
We’ll get along home, and when you’ve got some sup¬ 
per into you, you’ll get over having ideas like that.” 

“ Materialist,” he scoffed, and they walked on in 
silence, broken only by the exchange of little confi¬ 
dences that came into their heads as they went along. 

Throughout the evening Timothy frivolled; fore¬ 
casting impossible careers and impossible futures for 
the next generation; sketched Patricia Ellen in various 
attitudes of spanking, and generally so comported 



THE DOWNS 


7i 


himself that his wife, goaded to retaliation, told him 
he wasn’t fit to be a baby himself, let alone the father 
of one. 

But at night, when the lamps were turned out, and 
they lay in the close and quiet dark, he leant over, 
tender lips on hers, and called her by her new name — 
“ Mother.” 


CHAPTER V 


T HE winter passed on wings. Timothy finished 
and sold “ Bishops Cannings Church,” and with 
part of the proceeds insisted on Patricia Ellen 
keeping a servant. 

“ You are not going to get up and do fires and cook 
breakfasts this winter,” he said stubbornly; “ and 
I’m not a whole lot of good in the mornings in the 
cold weather, so we steps up the social, lady mine, 
and we keeps a gal.” 

He finished also a picture he did not sell: a view 
of a gap between the hills in the light of a September 
sunset; the gap where Patricia had told him of their 
coming gift. Loder, who visited them again just be¬ 
fore Christmas, gave a gasp when he saw it, and de¬ 
manded its prompt exhibition, but was refused. He 
argued, pleaded, expostulated: it was the finest thing 
of a decade, away and beyond anything that Hadden- 
don had ever done, good as his previous stuff had been. 
It was sheer lunacy not to exhibit it and a criminal 

waste; it must go to- 

“ Blazes — and so may you!” Timothy snapped. 
“See here, Loder, I painted that thing for a present 
to my wife, and it’s going to stay where it is. Now 


72 



THE DOWNS 


73 

dry up. I’ll have something for the galleries before 
the winter’s over.” 

He had taken a study-sketch for it the evening after 
he and Patricia had walked back from Cannings; had 
worked at it in an ecstasy of love and joy, knowing 
it for the best work he would ever do. He had given 
it to her one morning, nameless, and standing by her, 
had pencilled a date on the margin with a quiet 
“ That’s the title, Patricia.” The look that passed 
between them made of the picture a sacrament; and 
now that anyone, even Loder, should dare to suggest 
that it should be hung in a gallery, where people would 
criticize and chatter, and wonder what the date meant 

- No; not if he never painted another stroke. And 

as soon as Loder had gone it should be taken down, and 
re-hung in their bedroom, where it would be safe from 
prying eyes. 

He kept his word, however, about giving the gal¬ 
leries something to get along with. That winter was 
marked by a series of tremendous northwesterly gales, 
sweeping across the Northern seas, driving scuds of 
snow and sleet before them, and leaving destruction 
behind. They struck the exposed ridges of the Marl¬ 
borough Downs with full fury. Patricia Ellen’s little 
maid, Emily, came in from her “ evenings ” with many 
tales of woe. 

“Oh, ma’am, Mr. Hughes over at Winterbourne, 
he’s had his cowshed roof blown clean off and killed two 
horses.” Another day it was: “Oh, ma’am, there’s a 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


74 

motor been blown right over on the Marlborough road, 
and a lady hurted bad; they Ve taken her into Swindon 
to the Hospital,” and so on, with varying degrees of 
dramatic intensity. 

Timothy was sorry for the damage and loss; none 
the less, as he said cheerfully: “ One man’s meat is 
another man’s poison, only it’s the other way round ”; 
and the three “ Studies of Wind ” which he accom¬ 
plished during that stormy January and, when finished, 
gave to the world, were creations of a wild, weird 
beauty that roused a sudden spurt of enthusiasm in 
the great “ B.P.” 

His work was his natural outlet for emotion, as 
Patricia’s was her much serving: and both of them that 
winter had need of an outlet for happiness that seemed 
too great for life to hold. 

They discussed the baby’s name one day of late 
February, when the early spring twilight was darken¬ 
ing from blue-green to grey over the hills outside; and 
the air was full of the scent of young growing things. 
They were sitting in the firelight after tea; Patricia 
Ellen in a big arm-chair purchased with an unexpected 
commission for some illustrations; Timothy hunched 
up like a cat on a big hassock with his head against her 
arm. 

“ If it’s a boy,” said Patricia Ellen, “ should you 
think we might call him Richard, after Father? Or 
would you like your Father’s name for him? ” 

“ I should like Richard,” said Timothy unhesita- 


THE DOWNS 


75 

tingly; “ it was the name of a good man.” He paused, 
and then continued, with some difficulty: “ You see, 
Patricia, it’s a rotten thing to say, but I haven’t any 
very happy memories of my Father. I don’t think he 
ever played a game with me, and he always seemed a 
long way off. I don’t feel angry about it, or sore, or 
anything like that; it just happened so.” (His wife 
had noticed many times that most things that hurt or 
injured Timothy “ just happened so.”) “ But I was 

a lonely little chap, and I think I’d rather our baby’s 
name didn’t have any connection with that time.” 

He rested his head against her arm again, looking 
into the fire and humming a little song, apropos of 
nothing that came into his head: 

“ But Phyllida, my Phyllida, 

She dons a russet gown, 

And goes to gather May-dew 

Before the world comes down-” 

then roused up and spoke more cheerfully: “ So if 
he’s a boy we’ll call him Richard, and if he’s a girl, 
what then? Patricia? ” 

“ No! ” said Patricia Ellen with sudden vehemence; 
“ Timothy, I know I’m silly, but that’s your name for 
me between us two: nobody ever wanted to call me 
anything but Ellen before; and I couldn’t bear you to 
call anybody else by it, not even our baby.” 

Timothy wriggled up on to one side of the chair 
till he was high enough to press her head against him. 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


76 

“ It was only because it was your name I wanted 
it; what a funny bundle of fancies it is,” he said, 
tenderly. 

“ No one ever found out any fancies in me before, 
Timothy,” she said, leaning back against him. 
Timothy murmured his little song again. 

“ After all,” he said, breaking off in the middle, 
“ why not that? ” 

“ Which? ” asked Patricia Ellen, bewildered. 

“ Why that — Phyllida; it’s a pretty old name and 
she comes in May, and, oh, I think the whole song 
would suit our baby altogether, if she’s a true daughter 
of her parents. Let’s say Phyllida, Patricia.” 

Which is how it came about that, on May 12 th, 
Phyllida Haddendon opened her eyes on a welcoming 
world. 

She was absurdly like her father, libellous though 
he declared the statement to be. Even when she lay, 
a shapeless bundle with an indiarubber face, in her 
perambulator in the fir tree enclosure, with Patricia 
Ellen’s chickens running round the wheels, her mother 
declared that she had Timothy’s way of looking and 
laughing under her eyelids; and that she was like him, 
too, in her little restless fidgets with her hands, and in 
the way she was so pleased with everything. For she 
was a most sunny and contented baby; sleeping, wak¬ 
ing and feeding at orthodox and correct intervals, 
rarely crying, save on one or two occasions when her 
small will came into collision with the will of the larger 


THE DOWNS 


77 

power who guided her destinies; when she roared with 
a heartiness that betokened well for her physical 
strength. 

Timothy delighted in her; she was the most wonder¬ 
ful of new toys, and he scandalously wasted both his 
own time and Patricia Ellen’s by calling the latter out 
into the fir tree enclosure every half hour to look at 
some new pretty grace of attitude, some new sweetness 
of smile. This early summer was of all summers the 
most marvellous: even hard-headed, material minded 
farmers who had no baby said they never remembered 
such a June: while for them, with a baby, the world 
was made of sunshine and flowers. 

It was clearly an inspiration of Heaven which had 
sent them to the house with the fir tree enclosure — 
Patricia Ellen had trained rambler roses up some of 
the dark trunks — because the baby liked to lie and 
watch the tops waving. It was also a good thing the 
main road was a little distance away, because she was 
such a noticing little thing: always her little head came 
round when the Swindon ’bus, or a char-a-banc, or a 
lorry, lumbered along; and at two months old, she 
was even making little ineffectual efforts to raise her 
head and look at things: that being close to a road and 
its traffic might have worried her. 

“ It’s altogether an ideal place for a baby,” said 
Timothy, as he and Patricia looked down at the per¬ 
ambulator together. “ Phyllida Haddendon, you are 
a very fortunate young woman, do you know? ” 


78 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


Phyllida Haddendon gurgled at him entrancingly, 
and made a soft little coo: he broke into delighted 
laughter. “ Look, Patricia, she’s trying to talk to us, 
the darling. Won’t it be simply scrumptious when 
she really does talk: there’ll be such heaps and heaps 
of things to tell her and show her.” 

“ Well, yes, I suppose it will,” said Patricia Ellen 
a little doubtfully. They turned and walked across the 
grass: she had come out to collect the eggs. “ I 
mean,” as he looked at her questioningly; “ sometimes 
I think it will be lovely to have her growing big and 

tall, and then sometimes-” She fiddled with the 

latch of the hen-house door, shy as ever of expressing 
her feelings. “ Sometimes I think I don’t want her 
any different from what she is; I do so love her in 
my arms.” 

Timothy nodded, seeing a vision of what thrilled 
him anew every time he looked at it: Patricia Ellen 
in her low chair crooning and swaying; her face di¬ 
vine in her splendid motherhood; the firm whiteness 
of her breast a little exposed, and soft baby lips 
pressed against her bosom. 

But already that first stage was passing, bottles were 
beginning to form part of the daily routine; and he 
understood his wife’s faint regret, and voiced it aloud. 

“ Yes, I know,” he said. “ I picked her up yester¬ 
day — oh, of course it’s spoiling her, but she’d wakened 
up frightened over something and I couldn’t help it; 
and she turned and snuggled into me with her little 



THE DOWNS 


79 


head in the hollow of my shoulder, and went to sleep 
again: and I wished then I could always hold her 
so, against any fright that came. But, Patricia, we can 
always love her so that in heart she’ll turn and snuggle 
to us for every bit of help she wants. I’m sure, abso¬ 
lutely dead certain, that God never meant babies and 
their fathers and mothers to grow up apart. They 
would have different ideas, of course: she will; and 
different ways of looking at things from yours and 
mine. But she needn’t grow away from us, because 
she grows older with us.” 


CHAPTER VI 


P ATRICIA ELLEN was standing out by her gate 
looking up the road for the last ’bus down from 
Swindon. It was thirteen months almost to the 
day since she and Timothy had sat and had their tea 
by the churchyard wall at Cannings, and walked home 
in the sunset through the golden harvest fields; but 
there was a great contrast between that evening and 
the one on which she looked out now. The lovely early 
summer had brought no fulfilment of its promise; 
after the turn of the days, the sky showed clouds — 
only little scudding, fleeting things at first, with fugi¬ 
tive drops falling from them, and then sunshine again; 
but the showers grew heavier as July drew on, and men 
began to wonder whether “ ’twould clear by St. 
Swithin, or whether we’m in fer a wet spell.” 

St. Swithin sustained his reputation; he brought a 
continuing downpour; day after day the rain fell piti¬ 
lessly. Watery gleams of sunshine interspersed it at 
times; enough, as the farmers said, to aggravate a 
man, and make him start his reapers on; but never 
sufficient to clear the skies or dry the sodden ground. 
Fruit mildewed, rotted and dropped. Potatoes 
sprouted before they were dug; corn lay beaten to the 
80 


THE DOWNS 


81 


ground, a black and pulpy mass, with grass growing 
through it. Scores of acres had never been cut at all, 
and were being ploughed in for manure that next year’s 
fruition might rise, Phcenix-like, from the death of this 
year’s hopes. Much which had been cut and shocked 
was little better: there was a great patch of oats that 
Patricia Ellen could see over towards Yatesbury; it 
had been cut the last week in August, when had come 
one of those tantalizing interludes; and there it had 
lain, growing ever blacker and more hopeless, till this 
morning the ploughs started work on it, and where had 
been oats were now gaunt grey furrows, like the skele¬ 
ton ribs of the starved earth. 

The dark was gathering in; a thrush in the top of 
one of the fir trees was singing his requiem for the 
weeping, ruined harvest, and Patricia Ellen, though 
she had never read, or heard of, Lewis Morris’ poign¬ 
ant little ode, felt as if the quavering runs and trills, 
a mockery of the gay spring song, were voicing all 
the sorrow of the world, and she shivered as she looked 
up the road, though the October evening was mild. 

For her hopes were dying under the growing fear of 
suffering and loss, as the harvest had died under the 
rain. 

Timothy had received a letter at the end of June 
asking if he would accept a commission for a series 
of colour drawings to illustrate a “ Life of Richard 
Jefferies.” It was to be an edition de luxe, brought out 
by subscription amongst enthusiastic admirers of that 


82 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


Wiltshire worthy. Timothy did not want the com¬ 
mission exactly: he did not care about being away 
from home now that Patricia Ellen could not go with 
him; and the Jefferies’ country — Coate, Burderop, 
Syddington, Ogbourne — was difficult of access from 
Avebury, though not far in actual distance. Moreover, 
the subject had little or no attraction for him; he ac¬ 
knowledged the charm of Jefferies’ nature study, and 
the beauty of his phraseology; but the morbid, ego¬ 
tistical self-isolation of the man repelled him. 

“ For a chap to go mooning off like that,” he said, 
as he discussed it with Patricia Ellen; “ messing about 
whole days together with his gun, when his father’s 
farm was going to rack and ruin — well, perhaps his 
great mind was storing materials for future work; but 
all the same, if I’d caught him at it, I should have felt 
like giving him what old Dame Sims impolitely calls 
a pat on the backside.” 

“ I don’t think I should have liked him very much,” 
Patricia Ellen said. His books, she frankly confessed, 
were much too learned for her; she liked a story where 
they got married in the end. “ But, of course,” she 
went on, “ he must be very wonderful, or people 
wouldn’t be going to write a book about him and sell 
it for five guineas.” 

“ It’s just because of the price that I think I must 
accept it,” said Timothy reluctantly; “ it’s such an 
enormous lot they’re offering me. We shall have'to 
begin to think about Phyllida’s education, you see, 


THE DOWNS 


83 

Patricia, and a hundred pounds would be a pretty 
decent start for a fund for that. You needn’t laugh; 
I’m not suggesting that she shall go to boarding-school 
to-morrow; but it is a lot of money.” 

And because it was a lot of money he accepted the 
commission and started off with the rough context of 
the book, and the list of subjects suggested for his 
ten illustrations, the day before St. Swithin. 

It was heart-breaking work. The big price called 
for finished drawings, and the country being strange 
to him, he had to make many studies of each spot sug¬ 
gested in order to obtain the best point of view; and 
to do so entailed staying several nights in each place, 
for it was impossible always to return to Avebury, 
though he came home as often as he could. He got 
chilled through and through, standing about waiting 
for rain to cease, or sitting down hurriedly in damp 
clothes to blot in the effect of some transient gleam of 
sunlight on farmhouse or village street. The lights 
drove him distracted; either the sky and the hills and 
everything below and between them looked like lumps 
of cold porridge, or else the clouds were shifting and 
changing and making such a kaleidoscope of colour 
that no building looked alike for ten minutes together. 
Sketch after sketch he destroyed as useless, and of 
his final selection two were not in the least what he 
wanted. He caught cold and coughed incessantly; 
swearing irritably because it made his hand shake, but 
unable to check or relieve it. Patricia Ellen worried 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


84 

herself nearly sick; begged him on one of his home¬ 
comings to give up the work and come home to be 
nursed, and was told fretfully that he wasn’t going to 
chuck away a hundred pounds because he’d got a cold; 
besides, he’d undertaken the job; she knew nothing 
about business. He kissed her remorsefully a minute 
later, bemoaning wearily that he was getting so bad- 
tempered and couldn’t seem to help it, which admis¬ 
sion troubled Patricia Ellen almost more than the 
cough, for it was so unlike him. 

She wondered desperately if she could go and stay 
in the various villages with him, but she could not keep 
changing Phyllida’s milk, and she had no one with 
whom she could comfortably leave the child. And if 
she fussed too much it seemed to bother him. There 
was nothing to do but wait and possess her soul in 
what patience she could till the drawings were finished. 

He sent them up in September, and arranged to go 
up to London in October to interview the engraving 
firm who were undertaking the reproduction. The 
intervening fortnight was a trying one. Patricia Ellen 
racked her brains for dainties to tempt his appetite, 
or lack of it; coddled and cosseted him to the best of 
her considerable ability; and certainly his cough did 
improve, and he looked less pinched; but all the time 
she felt he was shutting himself away from her. 

He would disappear into the studio and stay there 
for hours, but no work appeared as a result, and though 


THE DOWNS 85 

he talked to her and tried to chatter his usual fantastic 
nonsense to baby Phyllida, it was a palpable effort. 

Three days before he was to go, however, he sud¬ 
denly broke down. He had a letter in the morning 
asking if he would alter his appointment from twelve 
noon to two p.m., and then with a great appearance of 
casualness said: 

“ I almost think, as I’ve got the morning clear, I’ll 
go and see Mitchelson, my old doctor; I daresay he 
could do something for this cough — the old chap 

used to be very decent to me-” and might have 

carried it off, had he not met his wife’s anxious, affec¬ 
tionate eyes full on his with such beseeching, that he 
gave way and blurted out the miserable truth; that 
the cold had gone to his lungs and he had been spit¬ 
ting blood increasingly for the last three weeks. 

“ I’ve been trying to keep it from you, Patricia 
mine,” he said miserably; “ I thought I would write to 
you from London after I had seen Mitchelson; but 
I hadn’t even the pluck for that. Sweetheart, you 
mustn’t kiss me, it’s infectious, you know.” 

Patricia laughed, curtly and hardly. “ I’ve no fear 
of that,” she said. “ I’ve no patience with all this fuss 
about infection, afraid to give a helping hand to any 
that’s in need because you might catch something.” 

She kissed him again defiantly, and then held him 
to her, crooning over him almost as she crooned over 
Phyllida; her love sweeping away her undemonstra- 



86 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


tiveness and her dislike of being “ silly,” and giving 
him the comfort and assurance he longed for. 

“ I oughtn’t to have married you, Patricia,” he told 
her sadly. “ I oughtn’t to; I wasn’t strong enough — 
and then there’s Phyllida — oh, I oughtn’t to have 
done it; giving you trouble-” 

“ Now you listen to me,” said Patricia Ellen firmly. 
She planted herself squarely in front of him, and spoke 
out as if she was delivering a proclamation: “ I’ll say 
my say this once, and then we’ll drop the subject for 
good and all. As far as Phyllida is concerned, she’s 
a perfectly strong, healthy baby: she’ll have fresh air 
and good food; and even if you have got — consump¬ 
tion ” — she boggled a little at the word — “ there’s 
no reason in the world why she should ever get it. 

And as for me-” She paused again, and then 

went on, her full voice deeper and softer: “ I’d have 
married you, you wanting me, if you’d been a bed¬ 
ridden invalid. What does it matter if you aren’t 
strong? There’s a lot of talk now about delicate 
people marrying and having children, I know, but I 
say if a man’s good and brave, and loving and kind, 
that’s as well worth a woman’s having, and as well 
worth being passed on to a child, as health and 
strength. Some of the things in the papers I’ve been 
fair shamed to read. You’d think it didn’t matter if 
a man had children by six women at once, so long as 
he and the women were healthy in body. I don’t hold 
with it. I married you because I loved you, and proud 




THE DOWNS 


87 

and glad I am to have been your wife, and nothing — 
illness or anything else — would change that; only if 
you stopped caring for me.” 

She stopped, flushed and panting; and Timothy 
stood up, flushed also. “ You’re a splendid woman, 
Patricia,” he said, low and deeply moved: “ I’ll try 
and be as brave as you.” 

And now she was waiting for him to come home, 
waiting to hear the doctor’s verdict. 

She did not feel brave now, poor Patricia Ellen, as 
she heard the rumble of the ’bus coming along the 
curve of the road from Avebury. The evening was 
grey with a damp softness that meant rain again before 
the morning; but so still and windless that she could 
faintly hear the lumbering vehicle as far back as the 
Beckhampton cross-roads. She shivered again, feel¬ 
ing utterly panic-stricken; how could she face the loss 
of him, how bear to see him suffer? But her face was 
as quietly welcoming and kind as ever when he alighted 
from the ’bus five minutes later. 

He told her his sentence as they had supper; it was 
tuberculosis, and there were patches on both lungs, 
though the left was the worst. He had pulled himself 
together over it, however, and — “ I’m not going to 
play baby again, Patricia.” The mischief had not 
started with the cold, only developed; it was evidently 
of long standing, had probably started years before 
and been arrested. 

“ He said all the care you’ve given me has stopped 


88 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


me from getting worse: if I’d stayed on in London I’d 
probably have been dead by now; and he said, too, the 
life I was leading these days, and the way you spoilt 
me — I told him all about you — gave me a good fight¬ 
ing chance. He suggested a sanitorium; but I know 
I’d die straight away in one of those places; so he’s 
told me what to do at home.” 

Bit by bit they talked it out. His heart was not 
too strong, and the doctor had recommended a lower 
altitude and sea air for the winter; and — “ It’s funny 
how things do always turn out right for me, Patricia ” 
— a member of the engraving firm had asked him if 
he would do a set of six sketches of Torquay. “ It’s 
his father’s and mother’s golden wedding just after 
Christmas,” Timothy explained, “ and they were mar¬ 
ried at Old Torre Church, so he wants to give them the 
sketches for a present. I thought we could go down 
there and take rooms, or perhaps a little furnished 
cottage, if we could get it; the sketches would go a 
long way towards paying for it. It wouldn’t hurt Phyl- 
lida, would it, Patricia? I don’t want to be separated 
from you again.” 

“ You shan’t be,” said Patricia Ellen; “even if it 
did hurt Phyllida, but it won’t.” 

Phyllida for the time being was thrust into the back¬ 
ground; provided she had bodily care, other attention 
did not matter for a time. Her small life was but 
beginning: Timothy’s — no, it was not ending! She 
pushed the thought away from her passionately and 
spoke again: 


THE DOWNS 


89 

“ You’re sure it will be all right for you to sketch, 
Timothy? Because we could manage: I’ve some 
money saved up from the poultry; and I thought you 
had to rest a lot in that consumption treatment? ” 

“ So you have; but I’m not such an invalid as all 
that. I went back and told Mitchelson about the Tor¬ 
quay offer; and I told him, too, that I couldn’t do 
nothing all the time, and sketching was as easy as 
sleeping; and he said all right, as long as I was careful 
and didn’t get tired. Now that’s that. Let’s come 
and sit in the firelight like we used to and forget my 
bothersome chest. There are plenty of good things 
left to us yet, Patricia mine.” 

They went to Torquay, or rather Babbacombe, in 
ten days time. Phyllida throve exceedingly with the 
change; her father did not. Disguise it as Patricia 
Ellen might, fight against the knowledge as she did, 
there was no gainsaying that he grew slowly but stead¬ 
ily worse. Every week there was a little and a little 
more weight lost; every week he was more easily tired; 
every week there was a little more hoarseness and the 
cough was more troublesome. He had insisted on 
sleeping by himself. Patricia protested, urging that 
she was not in the least nervous, and she could hear 
if he called her so much more easily if she were in the 
same room; she would rather be with him; but he held 
to his way; it would not be right to do anything else. 
So Patricia Ellen, lying in strained wakefulness on one 
side of the dividing wall, would hear him incessantly 
coughing on the other. 


go 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


He finished the sketches, though with difficulty, in¬ 
terrupted often by the acrid taste of blood in his 
mouth; but after they were completed he contented 
himself with lazily dabbing designs and pencil studies 
on a block pad that he could use lying down. 

The weather was against him. The Channel fogs 
were bad that autumn and outposts of them drifted 
in Torquay, sheeting everything in chilly white mist. 
Patricia Ellen shuddered at it; the men and women 
of the Downs dread fog almost as a sailor dreads 
them; they looked to her like the shrouds they have 
so often proved. And they made Timothy’s cough 
worse. 

The week before Christmas there came a day, one 
of several, of drizzling rain; the cliffs — red of 
Babbacombe and Maidencombe; grey of Meadfoot 
and the Thatcher — the distant peaks of Hey Tor and 
Ripple Tor, the meeting line of sea and sky; all alike 
were a hopeless leaden grey. And the sea, in a driz¬ 
zling rain, is one of the most depressing sights on earth. 

Timothy sat at the window of their sitting-room, 
and surveyed it in silence for a while; then said 
abruptly: “ Patricia, I should like to go home.” 

She looked up in startled amazement. 

“ I want to go home,” he repeated with growing 
vigour; “ this place is not doing me any good; I don’t 
feel nearly so well as when I came: and if I’ve got 
to die-” 

“ Timothy, don't! ” 



THE DOWNS 


9i 


“ I must this once, dear. If I’ve got to die, I’d 
rather die at home in our own cottage, amongst our 
own things; and with people near that have been kind 
to us.” 

Silence again. Patricia Ellen sat in strained dumb 
misery. If she spoke, she would break down, which 
would only upset him, and besides, what could she 
say? 

“ But I believe,” he went on, after another dis¬ 
approving gaze at the grey landscape outside — “ I 
believe if I go home, I shall get better. There are 
such a lot of things I miss here. I want to see Darl¬ 
ing’s horses going out for their gallops instead of that 
endless procession of bath chairs along the bit of 
level sea-front down in Torquay; I want to hear Emily 
coming in with the news; I miss the details of Mr. 
Beavan’s sheep and Mr. Horlock’s ‘ mangles ’ and 
‘ Vaither’s taties’; and I want to gossip with the 
postman and the milk boy, and old Mrs. Spence at the 
shop. These postmen never even say good-morning; 
the milk’s left on the doorstep in a bottle; and as for 
getting up any conversation with the elaborate young 
ladies in the shops here — they want something 
smarter and more attractive than the likes o’ me. 
There’s nobody here that cares tuppence about us, 
how we live or what we do, and I’m so tired of it. Pa¬ 
tricia, let’s go home for Christmas.” 

He had his way; when did he ever do anything 
else with Patricia Ellen? And home they went. 


CHAPTER VII 


OW mind, Emily, if it comes on to snow heavily, 
you are not to walk back, you are to come by 



the ’bus.” 

“ Yes’m, it does look likely for it. I wouldn’t go 
with the weather so black looking, and Master so 
poorly and all, but Mrs. Barrett, she said if I couldn’t 
come to be fitted to-day, she didn’t know as she could 
get it done in time; she’s got several to do, so I think 
I’d better go, ’m.” 

Emily was to be confirmed on Passion Sunday, 
which that year was the last one in March, and it was 
already past the first week of the month, so the Con¬ 
firmation dress was an urgent matter. Parson Cox 
and his wife had long ago given over any attempt to 
minimize the importance of the dress. Twenty years 
ago, when he was new in the parish, and filled with 
thoughts of spiritual uplifting and leadership, he had 
remonstrated with a servant of their own for going 
to the expense of a new white frock when she had an 
excellent and hardly-worn black one, and another of 
navy serge; and was promptly informed by the much 
hurt young person’s irate mother that if her girl 
couldn’t go to Church nice and fresh and decent in a 


Q2 


THE DOWNS 


93 

proper white frock same as the others, she shouldn’t 
go at all. Oh, yes, she’d heard what he did say about 
not thinking of the frock: if he’d got any girls of his 
own he’d know it made ’em think far more if they 
was different from everyone else. Anyway, everybody 
always did have a new frock, and a white frock for 
Confirmation, and hers shouldn’t do no less. (“ ’S if 
she was a tramping gippo,” she added under her 
breath, “going to Church in her working clothes! ”) 
Parson Cox retired and accepted the inevitable. “ I 
try to teach them now to be worthy of their white out¬ 
sides,” he said. 

Therefore, following the law of the Medes and 
Persians which altereth not, Emily departed to be 
fitted; and Patricia Ellen turned to go indoors again, 
stopping in the garden to pick a few early primroses. 

They had been home eleven weeks. Timothy had 
been certainly marvellously better; he laughed and 
chatted and played with Phyllida; was out and about 
everywhere, and even got out his colours and brushes 
and did several studies and one finished work of 
exquisite light and shade, of the mottled blue and grey 
skies of that January. 

It had been the softest, tenderest month. Days of 
thin, misty sunlight — sunlight that indeed hardly 
emerged from the delicate blue of the cloud shadows — 
succeeded nights as mild as those of an Algerian spring. 
Rose bushes and fruit trees began to bud; spring flow¬ 
ers in blossom; even the elm trees showed distinct 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


94 

signs of renewing life; and Mr. Simmons, the school¬ 
master, picked quite a large strawberry in his garden 
on the thirty-first of the month. “ Tho’, o’ course,” 
as Emily said, “ schoolmaster always was one as must 
have summat in his garden a bit more nor anybody 
else.” 

February succeeded January; a little less sunny, a 
little damper; but equally windless, equally soft. 
Wiseacres among the weather prophets shook their 
heads; foretold how “ we’m be goin’ to smart fer 
thic ”; uttered dismal prophecies as to the later lamb¬ 
ing, and hoped as Measter Haddendon oodn’t find as 
he’d coomb whoam from they waarm parts too soon 
like. 

Timothy laughed them to scorn. “ They’re all try¬ 
ing to persuade me that I’m going to be frozen to 
death about Easter,” he said, as they stood one morn¬ 
ing watching the long string of horses start off to the 
gallops on the open Down. “ As for warm places, I 
was colder in Devonshire than I have been since, and 
weaker;” and he swung Phyllida high up over his 
head to show how strong he was. 

But at the end of February came a change. The 
air grew bleak and chill; frost crept into the ground, 
not with diamond sparkle and sunshine that brought 
a glow to the blood; but black and hard, with leaden 
skies, and a dismal sounding wind. Small scuds of 
snow drifted along: lying white on the exposed crests 
of the hills; now for three days the glass had been fall- 


THE DOWNS 


95 

ing steadily, the cold increasing, and the wind blowing 
ever keener and fiercer from the north. 

Patricia Ellen carried the frost-bitten primroses in 
to Timothy, who had caught a chill with the change in 
the weather, and was coughing and shivering in front 
of a roaring fire. He ought to have been in bed for 
the last two days, though he insisted on coming down¬ 
stairs; but he seemed so very poorly that she felt more 
anxious than she would acknowledge, and was glad 
that, unbeknown to Timothy, she had told Emily to 
ask Dr. Bates to come out this afternoon, or at least, 
to-morrow morning. 

The sky all around looked evil; not so much dark 
as sullen and lowering. The wind seemed to mutter 
threats as it hissed over the frozen grass. Everything 
promised a really bad snowfall. If it broke before 
nightfall, the chances were that Emily would not come 
back till the morning; she was nervous of the ’bus 
after dark even in good weather. Phyllida was cutting 
a tooth, and was fretful and ailing; and Timothy 
looked and sounded so ill that Patricia Ellen rather 
shrank from the prospect of a night with no help in 
call. Still, it was no good worrying, she told herself. 
She would light up a fire in Timothy’s bedroom and 
persuade him to go to bed; when he had had some din¬ 
ner and was comfortably resting and warm, perhaps he 
would feel better. 

But he did not. 

About three o’clock the wind gave a sudden swoop- 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


96 

ing shriek and descended on the little house with a 
thud of attack like a battering ram; the snow, which 
had been brushing soft wings of increasing heaviness 
against the window, began to whirl in great masses, 
blotting out sky and hills, piling up on the window-sill, 
and bringing with it an intense chill. Patricia Ellen 
heaped on more coal, drew the blind and the curtains 
and lighted a lamp, but she could feel that the room 
had grown colder and Timothy’s cough was worse, 
his breathing harder. He was more flushed too, though 
he still shivered, and she fetched the thermometer 
which she had bought on the advice of the “ Guide to 
Young Mothers,” though Phyllida had rarely needed 
it, and took his temperature. It was a hundred and 
two. 

She stood aghast. In that weather Dr. Bates would 
probably wait till morning to come out, and Timothy 
ought to have a doctor at once; but it would take her 
at least two hours to walk to Avebury and back in such 
a storm as this, and she could not possibly leave him 
for that time. She could go to the racing stables and 
get them to telephone; even that would take her longer 
than she cared to be away; but she must get word to 
Dr. Bates somehow. 

She stooped over her husband. “ Timothy dear, I 
am going to get someone to send for the doctor; I will 
be as quick as I can, but I think you ought to have 
him.” 


THE DOWNS 


97 

He reached out two hot hands: “ I feel bad,” he said 
gaspingly; “ you won’t be long, Patricia? ” 

“ Only a little while,” she said cheerfully. 

She had brought Phyllida up into the bedroom; it 
was not good for the child, but she could not leave her 
downstairs alone. She put her into her cot now, gave 
her a bottle and her bells to keep her quiet; snatched 
a hat and coat from the cupboard and was gone. She 
tore downstairs and out at the door, but once outside 
she could hardly move; the snow was already up to her 
ankles and drifting horribly; the wind felt like a wall 
falling over on her. She ploughed her way out to the 
road, then stood and sobbed in relief. A motor was 
coming along from Cannings way; wobbling and sway¬ 
ing, its engines doing their last ounce; but still, going, 
and going in the way she wanted. She called and 
waved and managed to stop the car; its occupants were 
proceeding to Swindon, if it proved possible to get 
there, and being kindly-disposed folk, willingly under¬ 
took to find Dr. Bates’ house in Avebury and ask him 
to come out immediately. 

When she got back, Patricia Ellen cast a thought 
towards her fowls. Things might be worse later; she 
scuffled round to the back and along to the fowl-house, 
lurching and staggering under the wind: threw corn 
on the floor and banged the door; they must look after 
themselves for to-night, she could not stop to shut 
them up properly. 


98 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


She kicked off her wet shoes and mounted the stairs 
swiftly, but even in the quarter of an hour that had 
elapsed since she left the room, Timothy was worse. 
Patricia Ellen had not had much experience of illness, 
but she had seen pneumonia once, and had no difficulty 
in recognising it again. She cast round in her mind 
desperately for what remedies she could apply till the 
doctor came; she had cotton wool; she could paint his 
chest and back with iodine, and then put the wool on; 
nourishment — egg and milk and brandy — her brain 
worked mechanically, and mechanically her hands and 
feet obeyed it; raised him up on his pillows and fed 
him; put Phyllida comfortable for the night; made up 
the fire. But all the time she was calculating feverishly 
— how soon could the doctor be there? Half-an-hour 
for that car to get to Avebury — they could not travel 
fast — a little time to find the right house; half-an- 
hour for him to get back — the wind would be behind 
him, but the roads would be worse; an hour and a half 
at the outside; by a quarter to seven he should arrive. 
If only he weren’t delayed; if only the weather did not 
get worse! She thought perhaps the wind had dropped 
a little; and, as if in mockery, there came a gust that 
shook the furniture on the floor. She wondered if the 
snow was falling as fast: pulled aside the blind to look 
and drew it back with a shudder; the window was 
blocked with a mask of white; and turning back, 
looking across to the lamp, she could see her breath 
in the room, in spite of the roaring fire. 


THE DOWNS 


99 


Quarter past seven! Two hours since she had sent 
her message! Oh God, let him come quickly! Oh 
God, don’t let him be delayed any more! 

The ’bus must have passed by now; no Emily; she 
would have the night alone. Timothy began to move 
restlessly with a murmur of delirious talk. She fed 
him again and took his temperature; one hundred and 
four, point two. He smiled up at her as she touched 
him, but relapsed immediately into muttering; mutter¬ 
ing interrupted by gasping coughs and low moans of 
pain. 

Eight o’clock. Oh God, let the doctor come! 

She would want more coal for the night; she would 
get that now, and she went downstairs and out to the 
back door with a coal-scuttle. It would not open. She 
pushed and heaved frantically; it gave an inch or two, 
an inch or two more and she realized what had hap¬ 
pened — it was blocked with snow. She got it open 
somehow, seized a shovel, and began madly to clear a 
way to the coal-house, fighting the thought that if it 
was like this at the back, what was it like in the front, 
the way the wind came? What, oh what was it like on 
the Avebury road? Was it possible the doctor would 
not be able to get through to them that night? Surely 
the snow could not be so deep in a few hours? Oh 
God, let him come! 

Back into the bedroom with her coal, piling up the 
fire; the room must be got warmer; it made one think 
of the chill of Death creeping in — this dreadful cold. 


100 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


More milk and brandy and beaten egg; if only she 
could keep his strength up with that; but it was so 
very little he could take at a time, and such a suffo¬ 
cating struggle to get breath to swallow even that. 

Ten o’clock! Oh God, please won’t you let the 
doctor come? 

The fury outside was increasing. The snow, more 
like tiny pellets of ice than ordinary snow, was coming 
down the chimney into the fire, hissing and sizzling; the 
little house was trembling under the blows of the wind 
as a ship trembles when a great wave strikes her. Facts 
and memories of bygone blizzards thrust themselves, 
no longer to be denied, into Patricia Ellen’s mind: 
tales of men losing the roads over the hills, wandering 
till they dropped from exhaustion, and lay helpless till 
Death came: recollections in her own personal expe¬ 
rience of cars and waggons trying to charge the drifts 
and being caught, having to be derelict for days till 
they could be dug out. She remembered how, some 
few winters since, an auctioneer had wanted to get 
from Devizes to Marlborough the day after such a 
storm as this; had tried five different roads and found 
them all impassable, and had had to give up his sale. 
Twice since she had lived in Avebury the Devizes 
road had been blocked for a week. If it should be so 
now! If the doctor should not come, and Timothy 
died for lack of help! She did not know that he had 
been called out miles away toward Winterbourne Bas¬ 
sett to usher a little new life into the world, and once 


THE DOWNS 


IOI 


there could not return, but as the hands of the clock 
pointed to eleven, she felt there was no hope of his 
coming. The question of supplies, too, was worrying 
her. If the roads were blocked, how could the milk 
boy get through? and how could she feed either Timo¬ 
thy or her baby? And she had not much oil. 

Timothy’s delirium increased; he had two gleams 
of semi-consciousness; once, he asked if she wasn’t 
going to bed soon, she looked so tired; once, he wanted 
to say good-night to Phyllida, and Patricia Ellen 
picked her out of her cot, and held her, flushed with 
sleep, against him — she was fortunately better, and 
very drowsy. But apart from those two gleams, he 
chattered fast and almost indistinguishably to her, to 
Loder, to her father, to others, whose names she did 
not even know. He struggled against food with amaz¬ 
ing strength, so that she had to use all her force to 
keep him down in bed. 

But slowly, indefinably, a change was coming; his 
wife watched it shudderingly, and in the small hours, 
those hours when Life, relaxing, looses his hold, and 
Death and Sleep become nearest, closest kin, she lost 
what little hope she still had. Slowly, slowly, the eyes 
lost their brilliancy, dimmed, filmed, grew sunken. 
Slowly the flushed face changed to grey; grew sharp¬ 
ened, pointed, mask-like; the voice weakened, thinned, 
died into silence; the temperature dropped with a sud¬ 
den, fatal rush; and the death chill outside crept 
closer; entered; clutched with a cruel hand. Minute 


102 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


by minute Patrica Ellen battled. Hot water bottles 
to his feet, but the chill crept higher; to his limbs, but 
it crept higher yet. Drop by drop, she poured brandy 
into the half-open lips, but by dreadfully advancing 
degrees his throat refused to swallow, till at length, 
drop by drop, it trickled useless out of his mouth 
again. 

She held him close in her strong, warm arm, his head 
against her shoulder (stabbingly came the remem¬ 
brance of the many times he had softly rested it so), 
but the Death chill rose still; and towards five o’clock 
she laid him back on the pillows. The cough was gone, 
life was gone, save for a fluttering, almost impercep¬ 
tible breathing; he would not move again, she thought; 
the end would be mercifully quiet, and she sat in 
frozen misery to wait for it. 

Suddenly he sat upright, eyes open, smiling straight 
into hers. 

“ Patricia, my dear lady, who are you-? ” then 

checked, choked, caught into the grip of a dreadful 
convulsive struggle for breath. He fought for it, claw¬ 
ing wildly for space and air, his face twisted, contorted 
beyond recognition. 

Patricia Ellen shrieked, threw herself on him, 
screaming vain appeals to stop; rushed to the window 
with a futile thought of calling for help — who in that 
storm-swept stretch of country there would come to 
help, the poor demented soul could not pause to think 
— but the window was held fast by frozen snow; not 



THE DOWNS 


103 


one hair’s breadth could she move it, and she rushed 
back to the bed again. Three times the horrible 
struggle came; then a sudden vomiting, followed by a 
relaxing of face and limbs, and a white light of peace 
that rivalled the whiteness of the snow outside. 

Thenceforward for some hours there was no move¬ 
ment in the room; nothing to differentiate its life from 
that of the storm furies on the hills — the valkyries 
who had borne away a soul — save that now and again 
there was a low moan from a shuddering, crouching 
figure by the bed, and that, as the time drew on for the 
sounds and movements of every-day work, there came 
the frightened crying of a neglected child. 

It was Andrews, odd man about the stables at Dar¬ 
ling’s, who a week later supplied further details of that 
night; his audience being one of the riders who had 
been away for ten days. 

“ Pretty bad it’s been here,” he was saying, “ fifteen 
cars they dug out betwixt Avebury and Bishops Can¬ 
nings: hopping mad some of the folks were, too, I’m 
told. There was one couple off to a dance somewhere; 
Tommy Bull told me about ’em. He was down at The 
Crown at Cannings, when these two come in; got stuck 
about two miles up, and had to get out and hoof it 
back. She’d been dabbing her face in the flour bag till 
she’d got ’nough to make a pudding, and it had gone 
kind o’ streaky with the snow. They didn’t half kick 
up a shindy ’cause the chaps said they weren’t going 


104 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


after the car till daylight. But some come out of it 
bad. That artist chap as lived over at that cottage by 
the fir trees — you ’member him? ” 

“ Little chap as used to watch us going out morn¬ 
ings? Had a baby with him sometimes.” 

“ That’s the chap; well, he’s dead. Wonder his wife 
and the kid aren’t too. Made me pretty sick, I can tell 
you. ’Twas this way: Wednesday, I think ’twas — 
when’d the snow come? Friday night, wasn’t it, and 
snowed till tea-time Sunday, off and on; must have 
been Wednesday morning then; the boss come out, 
and says would I take the spring cart and old Jess, 
and see if I could get through to Devizes for some 
things at the station. The roads weren’t possible for 
a car, but a horse an’ a high cart might do it, though 
none hadn’t been down yet. And I was fed up wi’ 
shovelling snow out o’ the yards, so I said as I’d try, 
and as I was going along the road pretty slow, and old 
Jess lookin’ as if for two pins she’d jib and go back 
home again, I saw somebody come and stand out by 
the gate of that cottage, waving her arms like, and 
when I got nigh, she was calling out: ‘ Come and help! 
Come and help! ’ — over and over again, and then she 
ran back in, and came out again with the baby in her 
arms, and held it up. The poor little kid was yelling 
like blazes, and she calling out: ‘ Come and help! ’ 
all the time. So I stops and gets out — old Jess was 
willing enough — and she catches on to me sort o’ daft 
like, and takes me in; she was trying to hush the kid; 


THE DOWNS 


105 

and just as we got inside, she says to me in that queer 
daftie voice: ‘ She’s so hungry, I had no milk.’ Well, 
I thought perhaps she wanted me to go and get some, 
so I turns to go out again; but she says: ‘No, no! ’ 
and starts on her ‘ Come and help ’ again. Tell you, 
it made me go funny. I says: ‘ All right, missus, what 
d’you want? ’ and she catches on to me again and takes 

me upstairs. Oh, my gosh! -” Andrews broke off 

with a shiver. 

“ Was the poor chap dead then? ” asked his hearer. 

“ Good Lord, yes. Dead? Had been for days. 
Save me from ever seeing the like again. He’d died 
early Saturday as far as I could make out from her; 
and there they’d been ever since: could get to no¬ 
body, and no one passing as she could call. She’d 
made some sort of attempt at laying him out, the poor 
soul: tied up his jaw, and straightened him a bit, and 
put a clean sheet over him, but that was all, and ’twas 
the fifth day he’d been lying there.” 

“Good God! ” said the listener, “and she’d been 
alone with him all that time? ” 

“Every damned minute; I was the first soul that 
had passed: the road was clear to Avebury, you see, 
but blocked both ways further on. She’d got no par¬ 
affin left, only a few candles; hardly any food. The 
milk boy had got through on Tuesday morning, but 
she had spells of unconsciousness, so we made out 
afterwards, and he must have come in one of them — 
anyway, he couldn’t make anyone hear, and the place 



io6 PATRICIA ELLEN 

looked all shut up, so he went away again. Her girl 
had gone home Friday and sprained her ankle and 
couldn’t come back, and no one had a-thought to come 
to her.” 

“ What’d you do? ” 

“ I was pretty well off my nut. I says to her: 
‘ You’d better get up in the cart, ma’am, with the baby, 
and I’ll drive you to your friends;’ but she starts a 
sort of choky sobbing, and says, oh, no, she couldn’t 
leave him, and then she goes and kisses that — that 
awful Thing on the bed. I got her downstairs again 
somehow; and I tell you, I’m not a religious sort o’ 
chap, but I was praying fit to sweat that someone ’ud 
come, as I could send for a doctor and more help; or 
else as ’ud stay with her while I went, and — well, 
they say prayer be answered someways — about a 
quarter of an hour afterwards as I was argyfyin’ with 
her to come with me, comes a rap at the door, and 
there was the old doctor from Avebury. She’d sent 
for him Friday, and he’d been out by Winterbourne 
and got caught there, and this was the first chance he’d 
had of getting back. He’d tried the day before, and 
got stuck t’other side o’ Monckton. They went up¬ 
stairs together, an’ I could hear her sobbing all wild 
like; an’ presently the doc. comes down looking green- 
er’n me, and comes out — I was walking Jess up an’ 
down a bit — and tells me to light out back to Ave¬ 
bury as quick as I could push along; an’ go to Mr. 
Cox at the Rectory, and Hutchins the undertaker, and 


THE DOWNS 


107 

a mort o’ stuff to do; but I didn’t care what ’twas; 
anything, so’s I could get away.” 

Andrews stopped and mopped his forehead. He 
was a young man of a ruddy and cheerful countenance 
in an ordinary way, but he was sickbed o’er with a 
paler hue, as he re-visioned that morning. 

“ Did you have to go before an inquest? ” enquired 
the other man. 

“ Wasn’t one: Doctor said it wasn’t necessary. 
He’d been to the little chap off and on — he was in 
consumption, you know — and ’twas pretty plain he’d 
died of pneumonia, from what could be got out of the 
wife; but she certainly couldn’t give any proper evi¬ 
dence, for she was pretty well off her head: had to be 
chloroformed to get her away, and there wasn’t nobody 
else could tell much. Funeral was to be this after¬ 
noon,” he added; “ looks like it coming along now. 
Gosh! what weather for it.” 

Herbert Loder, standing wet and cold by the open 
grave in Avebury churchyard, shared the sentiment, 
though the driving sleet that seemed as if it must 
penetrate even the coffin itself was a fitter winding 
sheet for the wreck and ruin that it covered, than blue 
skies and sunshine would have been. Loder, sum¬ 
moned by Mr. Cox, as being the only likely name and 
address among poor Timothy’s littered paper and 
sketches, was acting as chief mourner. 

Patricia Ellen lay in a drugged sleep in Dr. Bates’ 
house, and the village seemed to expect that someone 


108 PATRICIA ELLEN 

should fill the position. He did grieve for his dead 
friend very truly; he was terribly sorry for Patricia 
Ellen; but he was before all else an art critic, and he 
was chiefly conscious of a furious resentment against 
the Fate that had put a stop to Timothy’s pictures. 

He took almost a bitter joy in the sleet and the bit¬ 
ing wind. The hills seemed to sorrow befittingly that 
the master hand which had shown their beauties to the 
world would handle brush no more. This was the end, 
these slabs of half-frozen mud, falling heavily on the 
coffin. 

Good-bye, Timothy. 


PART II 

THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 









CHAPTER I 


O NE p.m. at Fullerton’s Restaurant — one p.m. 
in Victoria Street, Bristol: the noisiest, busiest, 
most scrambling hour in that noisy, busy, 
scrambling thoroughfare. Strings of taxis honked to 
and from Temple Meads station; trams clattered and 
rattled; lorries bumped and shook; drays and wag¬ 
gons, motor ’buses and vans streamed up and down in 
a continual roar of traffic; while, shot out on the pave¬ 
ment as the City clocks boomed or clanged the hour, 
from insurance offices, newspaper offices, shipping 
offices, transport offices, commercial machinery offices, 
typewriting offices, offices of every sort and descrip¬ 
tion; men and women hurried forth to get their mid¬ 
day meal. Some darted down side turnings or panted 
in the heat up Baldwin Street and across the Centre to 
sit and eat the contents of paper bags and sandwich 
cases on the seats in College Green or Colston Avenue, 
and get an hour, if not in the cool — no place was cool 
in this grilling July sun — at least in comparative quiet 
and under the greenness of trees. Cafes and confec¬ 
tioners in Clare Street and Wine Street received their 
quota, while others — a large contingent this — turned 
into Fullerton’s. 


hi 


112 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


It was close to Temple Meads, Fullerton’s, on the 
opposite side of the way, about five doors on the Bald¬ 
win Street side of the railway arch. It had been a 
church once, part of it; and the heavy stone columns 
and the meeting sweep of a Gothic fagade still enclosed 
and surmounted the plate-glass windows of Fullerton’s 
Quick Lunch Counter. The other half of the estab¬ 
lishment, a concrete building, whose height made it 
look narrow, contained the famous luncheon and tea 
rooms of Fullerton’s. The men who patronized these 
were of a different type from the frequenters of the 
Quick Lunch Counter: portly City Fathers of alder- 
manic mien, heads of famous business houses, Boards 
of Directors, shippers of liners and merchantmen just 
docked at Avonmouth; men of high place and grave 
responsibility, most of them, with a sprinkling of the 
gay world that lies beyond the connecting link of Park 
Street and Whiteladies Road, and of nurses and stu¬ 
dents from the “ General ” or the “ B.R.I.,” having a 
day off, and showing their friends the sights of the city. 

It was said that the aggregate wealth represented at 
Fullerton’s rooms in the luncheon hour ran into tens 
of millions. Many a deal which agitated the commer¬ 
cial world to its furthest corners was hatched over 
those round tables: many an amalgamation or federa¬ 
tion which has affected the history, not only of the 
city, but of the nation, has had its inception at Fuller¬ 
ton’s: many an informal meeting has been held there 
which has materially affected the lives of thousands of 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 113 

humbler folk, dependent for their daily bread upon the 
schemes of these great captains of industry. 

And the presiding genius of these rooms was Ellen 
Haddendon, installed in a cubicle marked “ Manager¬ 
ess ” in a corner of the largest room. 

She had been there since the September after Timo¬ 
thy died. It was through Dr. Bates she obtained the 
post, Fullerton’s, or rather its proprietor, being a dis¬ 
tant cousin of the doctor’s. The intervening summer 
she had spent at Uffcott with Cousin Jesse Cooksey and 
his wife, feeling her way slowly back to health and 
sanity. Her great physical strength had enabled her 
to throw off the bodily effects of exhaustion and terror 
very quickly; but the mental recovery was a very 
different matter. Dr. Bates considered it probable, 
had indeed strongly hoped, that a clear recollection of 
that nightmare five days would never return to her; 
but with normal physical conditions had come un¬ 
clouded memory; and every ghastly detail stood out in 
her brain, clear and distinct as an etching, even down 
to that last morning, an hour or so before help came, 
when her sick brain reminded her that she must feed 
the fowls; and having dug her way out to the fowl- 
house, she had encountered Death in yet another form, 
and had run back to the house, uttering screams of 
terror, pursued by the vision of those frozen, starved 
lumps of feathers. 

Weeks of black, sullen brooding followed on the 
recovery of clear recollection; weeks when one thing, 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


114 

and one thing only, kept her with a hold on life, and 
that was Phyllida. For the child’s sake she fought 
against the despair that engulfed her as day succeed¬ 
ing day brought no lessening of her agony of loss, 
but rather an intensifying of it; to see, wherever she 
turned her head, those damnable accursed hills that 
had brought the breath of death to Timothy; to go 
through the eternity of the daylight hours with never 
a sound of his voice, nor an echo of his laugh; to lie 
in the still worse eternity of the nights, and listen, half 
awake, for the sound of his breathing, wait for the 
touch of him as he turned, and rouse to the fact that 
never would there be sound or touch of him more: 
that he, so light and restless a sleeper, waking at the 
smallest sound — whisper of leaves outside the win¬ 
dow, soft hiss of wind or rain — was lying where every 
wind that blew would blow across him, but he would 
sleep, all unknowing: that he whom she had so care¬ 
fully shielded and guarded was soaked with rain, 
beaten with hail, chilled with sleet and snow, and not 
the uttermost agony of her love could shield nor guard 
him evermore. 

For she had no feeling of any life left to Timothy; 
she had believed in “ the Communion of Saints,” in 
the “ Resurrection of the Dead,” hundreds of times, 
but belief and hope were gone. Parson Cox made 
several journeys to Uffcott, good worthy man; argued 
and prayed and entreated with all the small amount 
of eloquence and the large amount of kindness of 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 115 

which he was capable, to win her to a mood of pious 
resignation; but the poor man had had little experi¬ 
ence of extremity of shock allied to extremity of sor¬ 
row, and had to fall back, baffled, on the performance 
of what helpful offices he could in the way of settling 
up her affairs. The black cloud which had hidden 
Timothy from her sight when the anaesthetic took effect 
which Dr. Bates had given her to get her away from 
the cottage, hid him still. Parson Cox might talk — he 
hadn’t lost his dearest, and he didn’t know anything 
about it. Timothy was gone; killed out by a world 
which was too hard for him; but leaving behind him 
— Phyllida. 

And slowly into the blackness came a thought, crys¬ 
tallizing into an iron determination, that the world 
should never so treat Phyllida. 

Their baby should never be lonely, Timothy had 
said; she should be so loved and cared for — she 
should! 

Patricia Ellen knew nothing of psychology, and 
would have held any talk of “ affinities ” or “ soul 
possession ” to be purest rubbish, if not dangerously 
near the witchcraft condemned of Holy Writ: but her 
attitude of mind over her baby was that of a mother 
wolf who has been robbed of all her cubs save one. 
She had room for but one affection, one ambition. 
Phyllida should have ease and comfort and happiness, 
if her mother had to do murder to get it for her. 

With that fixed determination she had come to 
Bristol. 


n6 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


It was a completely new life, which was what she 
desired. Ruthlessly she cut away from her all re¬ 
minders of her lost happiness; to see or handle any¬ 
thing connected with Timothy was like striking a raw 
burn. Letters from Loder she burnt unanswered till 
he ceased writing. She refused fiercely to visit the 
grave or to say good-bye to the cottage. Cousin Jesse 
Cooksey’s wife was indeed somewhat scandalized at 
her behaviour. 

“ I never saw anyone carry on so,” the good lady 
complained to Dr. Bates. “ One couldn’t expect her 
to hang about over long, of course, though we’re will¬ 
ing enough to keep her; still, she can’t live and bring 
up a child on the interest of three hundred and fifty 
pounds, and the sooner she starts work the better. 
Still, most women would go and say a bit of a prayer 
at their husband’s grave, and take a flower or two, 
but no, she won’t. Won’t talk about him, or anything. 
Well, I s’pose everybody has to go their own ways, but 
if my man was to go first I wouldn’t like to think I’d 
treated his memory so.” 

Such was Patricia Ellen’s attitude of mind as she 
assumed her duties at Fullerton’s. She arrived there 
on a day of drizzling rain, in which atmosphere entry 
into Bristol by means of the G.W.R. has not a pro¬ 
pitious feel. Temple Meads was wrapped in murky 
gloom, out of which the clatter of one of the noisiest 
stations in England smote upon unaccustomed country 
ears with deafening clamour. The slope down from 
the station entrance, and the surface of Victoria Street, 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 117 

were shiny and greasy with mud and smuts. Fuller¬ 
ton’s was blazing with electric light at half-an-hour 
after mid-day, and the heat and the smell of rich food 
floated out on to the pavement like a malodorous 
blanket. 

Mr. Fullerton, an under-sized little man, the reverse 
of a good advertisement for his business, with a mouth 
that reminded Patricia Ellen of the meeting of a knife 
and fork, informed her suavely — he was always 
suave, she learnt afterwards, “ a grinning devil ” one 
of the waitresses called him, “ and they’re worse than 
the snappy kind ” — and with sweetest politeness, that 
her rooms were on the fifth floor; that he would not 
expect her to be in attendance at lunch that day, but 
he hoped she would descend for tea, as Miss Newton, 
the retiring, going-to-be-married manageress, was only 
staying one more week, and there was much she would 
have to show her successor. And that was her little 
girl? He was sure she would be a good little girl and 
give them no trouble. 

There had been a little difficulty on Mr. Fullerton’s 
side about Phyllida accompanying her mother, but 
the fact that a sitting-room and bedroom were to be 
included as a part of the latter’s salary, made the 
engagement of a small nursemaid an easy matter. 
The rooms, Patricia Ellen found, were of a fair size, 
and light; the sitting-room window looked to the back, 
away from Victoria Street, and one could see a fair 
stretch of sky, and the glorious carved mass of St. 
Mary Redcliffe with its splendid spire. There was a 


n8 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


tiny square of flat leaded roof, too, on which it might 
be possible to get a breath of coolness on a summer 
evening: it promised to be fairly comfortable. She 
would have to hold her own with the proprietor though, 
she could see that. Be a good little girl and give them 
no trouble, indeed! 

So began her long and successful career at Fuller¬ 
ton’s. She found herself to be possessed of a business 
capacity that commanded respect, even in that city 
of business capacities. The suave Mr. Fullerton him¬ 
self consulted her on many points of import to the de¬ 
velopment of the restaurant. It was she who suggested 
the Quick Lunch Counter which brought its owner so 
many additional thousands; she who originated the 
idea of the Reading Room and Lounge upstairs. The 
luncheon and tea-rooms were served as if by perfect 
machinery; linen, glass, china, cutlery, silver and 
waitresses, all were parts of the machine; to be sorted, 
checked, repaired, renewed: all received exactly the 
same consideration, were viewed on the same plane, 
were held in exactly the same regard. Mr. James 
Fullerton, exemplary prop of the church he patron¬ 
ized in private life, was not a believer in sentiment. 
Ill clothed and fed waitresses were as bad for the 
reputation of the place as flawed or cracked china; 
therefore the girls he employed were given two good 
meals a day, and were sufficiently paid. Beyond that, 
“ Business is business ” was his maxim, and the prin¬ 
ciples of the Rotary Club found in him no adherent. 

Patricia Ellen had no objection. The waitresses 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 119 

were not likely to be of any use or benefit to Phyilida, 
and she had neither friendship nor affection to give to 
anyone who was not. To her, they were part of the 
furniture; if they were incompetent, of insufficient 
physical strength or moral integrity, they were 
scrapped with no more thought than a chair or a table 
would receive in similar conditions. She desired for 
herself no other sort of regard from them. None the 
less, in spite of her impersonal attitude, she won a 
certain amount of respect from them for her capability 
and her scrupulous justice. They did not altogether 
like her, but they trusted her. 

“ I’d a sight rather have her than old Fullerton, 
anyway,” declared one of them, an expert young per¬ 
son known as Nora. “ Not so pi-smarmy as he is, 
but you do know what she says she means; and that 
she don’t mean a lot more than she says, that’s got to 
come out against you afterwards.” 

Patricia Ellen, the name may still stand, though 
Patricia lay buried with Timothy, found a kind of 
pleasure after a time in the work. She never became 
wholly accustomed to the noise and the traffic; and 
to the end of the eleven years she lived in Bristol, cross¬ 
ing over the Tramway Centre was a nightmare. But 
to be doing something just a little better than other 
people could do it; to study the regular clientele, 
their likes and dislikes, and profit by the study; to 
train the waitresses and keep the stores so that James 
Fullerton could take a contract for a great City ban¬ 
quet or reception without a second thought as to 


120 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


whether there would be any hitch in the meeting of 
requirements for it — these things contained real en¬ 
joyment. And outside the work, in another world — 
a world in which had once lived a tenderly happy 
woman named Patricia — there was Phyllida. 

Timothy’s intention was carried out. Phyllida was 
never lonely; she was surrounded by love and care. 

She was not a little person of many demands; but 
from the time she could voice what few she had, in 
a small baby pipe, they crystallized into one over¬ 
whelming desire — beauty: in any shape or form ob¬ 
tainable; but in some shape or form. From the day 
when, gurgling and chuckling with delight, she had 
crooned, “ Pitty pitty,” over a bowl of roses on their 
sitting-room table, it had been the one great object of 
her little being, and to satisfy it, Patricia Ellen plunged 
deep into past agony. 

She had tried to shut a door on that hideous ex¬ 
perience, to make herself into an automaton, to ignore 
the fact that all the deep of her soul was one raging 
pain; but one generation cannot be cut off from an¬ 
other as one drops a shutter; and she was compelled 
to recognise that Timothy and Timothy’s child were 
indivisible, and that the older the child grew, the more 
exact, physically, mentally and spiritually, was her 
reproduction of her father. Small, pale, almost insig¬ 
nificant, until one came to the eyes, as he had been, 
with the same twist of the upper lip — a thousand 
times did Patricia Ellen catch her breath at tricks of 
voice and manner that were Timothy’s own: his 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 121 


caressing ways; his universal and unfailing friendli¬ 
ness, and his same gift. Long before the child could 
write, even with a larger hand guiding her small one 
between two wide apart lines, she would sit for hours 
with a pencil, drawing marvellous representations of 
the chairs, the flowers, the carts she saw in the street; 
and at the Kindergarten in the Whiteladies Road, 
where at the age of five she began to tread the path 
of knowledge in a somewhat erratic and freakish way, 
brush-work studies signed with a blotted P.H. were 
amongst the foremost exhibits at the annual prize¬ 
giving. 

Insistently she requested modifications and addi¬ 
tions to the two rooms up the five flights of stairs. 

“ Mummie, Miss Johnstone has two rose bushes in 
tubs outside the schoolroom door; they look so 
pretty”: a pause; then, ingratiatingly: “Mummie, 
don’t you think it would look rather pretty if we had 
a rose tree in a tub outside on the roof? Just one, 
Mummie.” 

And on another occasion as she and her mother 
descended from the tram — Patricia Ellen always took 
her to school in the morning — “ Mummie, don’t those 
little yellow flowers look pretty round that window? ” 

They were canary creepers and tropeoleum, growing 
in a window-box. Whereupon, a window-box made its 
appearance on the fifth floor in Victoria Street, and 
tubs of flowers were to be found on the scrap of flat 
roof. Patricia Ellen’s mouth was hard as she planted 
them: to feel the damp soil between her fingers again; 


122 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


to watch green things grow; and then to come back 
from memories of an open sun-kissed garden, sur¬ 
rounded by miles of thymy grass and sheen of young 
wheat, with song of larks and call of plover, to realities 
of miles of roofs and chimney pots and smoke-grimed 
windows, with clatter and roar of traffic, and working 
days passed in an atmosphere of rich food seasoned 
with complaints of plethoric, over-fed people. 

The “ roof-garden ” brought stabs enough, but 
other worse ones followed. Phyllida, with her brilliant 
eyes, her quick chatter, and her soft lovingness, was a 
favourite amongst her co-kindergarteners; was liked 
by their mothers, as: “ That nice little Haddendon 
child who looks so delicate; ” and there came a day, 
just before her ninth birthday, when much inward 
debate, caused by the domestic arrangements of other 
people’s houses, could no longer be satisfied from her 
own imagination, and produced the question, though 
with the instinctive feeling that it was unwelcome: 

“ Mummie, did I ever have a father? ” 

Patricia Ellen grew cold: was that to be raked out 
of the ashes? The little, puzzled face required an 
answer, however, so she replied dutifully: 

“ Yes, dear; he died when you were ten months 
old.” 

Followed other questions: what was he like? Where 
did they live? What did he do? What sort of pic¬ 
tures? Had Mummie got any of them? Couldn’t she 
see them? Had Mummie a photograph of him? 
Gladys Duncan’s father was dead, too, and she had 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 123 

a photograph of him by her bed. Please — she didn’t 
want to worry — but couldn’t she see his things? 

“ You must be getting ready for school now, child,” 
her mother’s voice interrupted her; “ and I can’t get 
them for you to-day. They are in a box at my cousin’s 
up near Swindon.” 

“ But you will get them, Mummie? ” 

And Patricia Ellen, unable to refuse her anything, 
had answered that she would. 

How to do it? All that day she battled with her¬ 
self. It would be easy enough to write to Sarah 
Cooksey and ask for the box. She had kept up a 
desultory correspondence with Cousin Jesse and his 
wife; and they had had Phyllida to stay once or twice 
after some childish ailment: they had several things 
up there; things which good-hearted Sarah Cooksey 

had brought away from the cottage with her- 

“-little personal things that you wouldn’t want 

sent to a furniture store, I thought, nor yet sold. They 
can stay till you’ve a place to put them. The 
framed pictures are all in that big wooden box, Ellen; 
and some unframed ones, and your poor, dear hus¬ 
band’s paints and brushes-” (How Timothy 

would have laughed at the “paints ”) “ — and some 
books and small things in the tin one.” 

The scene came between her and the laundry lists 
she was checking; between her and the menus she 
was compiling; before her eyes all day was the 
vision of a substantial wooden box and a smaller tin 
one, which for ij^arly eight years had stood undis- 





124 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


turbed, save at spring cleaning, in Cousin Sarah Cook¬ 
sey’s attic. There would be no difficulty in getting 
them. This was Tuesday; a postcard would bring 
them at latest by the end of the week. And she 
had promised Phyllida. 

But to open them! To come upon the picture of 
the gap between the hills with a date in September 
of ten years ago pencilled on its margin; the studies 
of the Jefferies illustrations that had been the price of 
a life; the unfinished study of tree growths still on the 
pad as it had been left when he said, with a shiver, 
that it was beastly cold, and he thought he would be 
lazy by the fire that morning. Almost worse to face 
than these, there would be sketches and studies made 
in the early days of their happiness: an exquisite little 
drawing of Timothy’s head that Carbonnel, a young 
pastel artist, had done while visiting them. 

But she had promised Phyllida. And — her innate 
justice forced her to the conclusion — the child had 
a right to know about her father. Slowly the door 
she had shut on the past was opening; slowly Patricia 
was awakening, becoming alive again; slowly, very 
slowly, she was coming back to Timothy; with great 
vicious stabs of pain, but with, also, promise of healing 
and comfort. 

The boxes arrived on Friday morning, just as she 
returned from seeing Phyllida to school, and, thankful 
for the small respite, she took an hour off from her 
work, that she might unpack them by herself. She 
opened the smaller one first; even by minutes she 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 125 

would put off seeing a pencilled date on the margin of 
a sunlit September landscape — and there on the very 
top lay CarbonnePs vivid pastel of Timothy, the eyes 
looking straight into her own as she raised the lid. 

She broke down. The pictured face was so astonish¬ 
ingly alive; almost she thought she could hear his 
“ Coming, Patricia mine? ” as she had heard it so 
many times when he was going out sketching. If 
she could hear a word of his now! Trembling, she 
picked up the two packets of letters that lay beside 
the pastel; one was marked in Timothy’s writing: 
“ From my Dear Lady: ” inside were her letters to him 
during the first weeks of their engagement; two dried 
and withered hare-bells — she remembered how the 
Downs had been one sheet of blue the day they had 
gone Home together, and how Timothy had picked 
a button-hole — and a sprig of wild thyme, which even 
now gave out a faint ghost of fragrance. 

The other packet was tied with blue ribbon; she 
undid it with shaking fingers, opened the first letter — 

“ Sweetheart, for that is v/hat you are: the sweetest, 
truest, goodest heart-” 

What would Timothy say of her now? She who 
was as hard as the nethermost millstone to all save 
Phyllida; who accepted Mr. James Fullerton’s applica¬ 
tion of “ Business is business,” with a tolerant smile; 
who could listen to innuendo risky stories, any and 
every variety of civilized vice and filth, with amused 
contempt, merely careful that no echo of it should 



126 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


reach the child — where was she drifting? What sort 
of a mother would she be to Phyllida growing up? 
And how, in God’s name, how would Timothy write 
to her if he sent her a letter now? 

Tears fell fast on the yellowed paper; but for the 
first time in these long years, she was weeping the 
tears of healing that God sends to the bereaved. When 
at the end of the hour she bathed her eyes and went 
downstairs to her work, she had done no more un¬ 
packing save to take a certain landscape from the 
larger box and hang it up, but she had surrendered 
her life into Timothy’s hands again. 

When Phyllida came home that evening they 
unpacked the boxes together, and she told the child 
openly and frankly all that she wanted to know about 
her father and her father’s life. 


CHAPTER II 


T HE year which followed seemed to Patricia Ellen, 
looking back on it, the most peacefully happy 
her life ever held after Timothy’s death. It was 
uneventful: and of years, as of souls and nations, one 
may sigh for the unhistorical. Small incidents stood 
out only because of the flatness of their background. 
Patricia Ellen always instinctively reckoned her cal¬ 
endar by what was “ out.” There were snowdrops in 
the windows when the boxes came from Uffcott. Phyl- 
lida had put bunches of them on a shelf below the 
pastel of her father. A customer in the restaurant left 
some primroses on the table on the day when Phyllida, 
Timothy’s brushes in her hand, her small serious face 
bent over his colours, essayed to draw St. Mary Red- 
cliffe spire against a sky of early twilight, with some 
pots of daffodils on the roof-garden for a foreground. 

Hawthorn flowering brought Phyllida’s birthday and 
two changes in the restaurant: the head waitress left, 
and Nora, of the demure expertness, and the “ pi- 
smarmy ” opinion of James Fullerton, took her place, 
while a new girl was engaged to train. Patricia Ellen 
chose her from a selection of applicants; not alto¬ 
gether, as formerly, because she seemed the most suit- 
127 


128 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


able — it had been noticed by shrewd observers who 
whisked from table to table that Mrs. Haddendon was 
softer than she used to be — but partly because the 
girl was in mourning and looked forlorn, and chiefly 
because, combined with those attributes, she had a 
curious fleeting likeness to Phyllida. 

Her name was Elsie Mitchell, and she was of rather 
better education than most of the girls at Fullerton’s. 
Her father had been the owner of a small printing 
works, and she had been brought up in some comfort 
and refinement, so that when the crash of his death 
urged upon her, untrained and inexperienced, the ne¬ 
cessity for an immediate weekly wage, she found the 
long hours of standing, the lifting and carrying, the 
harder on that account. 

The likeness to Phyllida, Patricia Ellen found, after 
a month or two, was emphatically of the surface only. 
The newly-appointed waitress was quick to learn, 
capable and attentive — to men of a certain type: 
elderly ladies and males to whom the “ glad eye ” 
represented boredom of an irritating kind, received 
from her scant consideration. Fullerton’s was a 
highly-respectable establishment. James Fullerton 
knew nothing and cared less about any connections his 
girls might establish after working hours; but in work¬ 
ing hours: “ In a restaurant of the kind I seek to 
maintain, Mrs. Haddendon, obtrusive behaviour 
towards men on the part of the waitresses is merely 
a set-back, and if you see any sign of it, I shall be glad 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 129 

if you will kindly dismiss the offender at once. Those 
who seek that kind of meretricious attraction must 
find it elsewhere.” 

Forewarned, Patricia Ellen remonstrated, even 
threatened, but Elsie Mitchell protested that there was 
no harm. It was so dull if she couldn’t talk a little 
bit; she’d never been used to sitting as mum as a 
doormat; and if she did laugh and carry on a bit with 
Mr. Conway and those that generally lunched with 
him, she meant nothing by it, and neither did they; 
besides, she was never noisy, which was true. 

And Patricia Ellen, with that haunting likeness be¬ 
fore her, could not bring herself to carry out her 
threats. 

She and Phyllida went to Uffcott for a fortnight when 
children began to bring bunches of wild scabious and 
long oat grasses intoi the City to sell, instead of 
moon-daisies. Phyllida took with her, in small, care¬ 
ful hands, a packet of her father’s sketches, to be quite 
sure that she was looking at the exact spot where he 
had done his pictures. Her father lived for her again. 
Night after night, till it became an established custom, 
she would take one sketch after another out of the 
box, and beg to know where this was? Where did he 
paint that? till every detail that Patricia Ellen could 
recollect and tell her, and that her small mind could 
understand, was stored and treasured in a childish but 
retentive memory. She was a quiet and considering 
little person, as children who live largely with grown- 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


130 

ups often are: she had her father’s wayward and over- 
vivid imagination, and his love of open spaces was 
strong in her. 

They went one day over to Avebury, to see “ where 
Father and Mother lived.” Patricia Ellen did not want 
to go. To visit the Red Lion was not so bad. The 
present proprietor and his wife were kindly, hospitable 
souls, and when she explained who she was insisted 
on her staying to dinner and — “ Look into the 
rooms? Yes, of course, and the little girl too — any¬ 
where you like.” 

To show Phyllida the room with the odd-shaped bow 
window, the bedroom where Timothy slept when he 
first came to Avebury, to laugh with her at the fear¬ 
some monsters on the steps — this, though it had the 
slight pathos that comes always in revisiting old asso¬ 
ciations and environments, held in it no real hurt. But 
to go to the grave in Avebury churchyard, to the 
cottage on the Beckhampton Road — she shrank in 
dread. She had been fighting hard to keep herself 
from drifting back into her mood of blackness, laugh¬ 
ing wryly when she overheard Sarah Cooksey remark 
to Jesse, her husband, that Ellen did seem to have 
got over her trouble at last; and she had steeled her¬ 
self to endure even this; but it was a relief when Phyl¬ 
lida did not like the cottage, or rather cottages, for 
they had been turned back again into two, and did 
not wish to go further than the gate. 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 131 

“They’re ugly, Mummie,” she complained; “not 
a bit like you said.” 

“ They’ve been let go, dear,” Patricia explained, 
and went on to show where roses had grown, and where 
a laburnum had shaded the studio window when she 
and Timothy had lived there. All such decorative 
efforts had disappeared. Pigs of strong and homely 
odour rooted about in the fir-tree enclosure where Phyl- 
lida had lain in her perambulator: the ramblers Patri¬ 
cia Ellen had trained up the black trunks had 
vanished; the laburnum had been grubbed up to make 
room for potatoes; lines of washing stretched from 
hooks driven in the house wall to posts at the garden’s 
edge; a woman in a blouse whose buttons, or lack 
of them, opened up a way of revelation, and who ap¬ 
peared to be wearing a derelict doormat on her head, 
was pinning up a piece of torn curtain at the window 
behind which Timothy had died. Patricia Ellen turned 
and followed Phyllida, thankful to escape. 

A fox terrier puppy accompanied them back to 
Bristol. Mr. Fullerton, approached by letter, de¬ 
murred, but finally consented, with the proviso that 
the animal was kept well under control and out of 
the way; somewhat on the same lines as he had con¬ 
sented to the advent of Phyllida herself. Child and 
dog counted for equality of uselessness in his estima¬ 
tion; both were instinctively careful to keep out of his 
sight, and both, playing together in the sitting-room 


132 PATRICIA ELLEN 

during the long winter evenings, knew entire happiness 
in each other. 

May again, and cowslips — it was a late cold spring 
— brought Phyllida’s tenth birthday, and her promo¬ 
tion to the upper school of her educational establish¬ 
ment; brought also the gradual ending of her mother’s 
new peace of mind. The child’s head-mistress was a 
modern educationalist who took her vocation seriously, 
and had a great ambition to train her pupils to be 
worthy citizens of a worthy country, as well as edu¬ 
cated and accomplished women. Her methods were 
as admirable as her aims; the girls who emerged from 
her care were most useful members of society, and 
as true to type as a public school-boy. But as the 
public school presses hardly upon the variant from 
type, so did the social and informative curriculum 
press hardly upon Phyllida. Home work in the even¬ 
ings drove out the games with the puppy; the talks 
over “ Father’s pictures ” and, what fretted the child 
more than anything else, her own dabbling with pencil 
and brush. She was not particularly clever at lessons, 
outside anything of which she could make a picture; 
and figures and calculations of all kinds were a night¬ 
mare to her. Many times did Patricia Ellen come 
up from the restaurant, her work finished, to find a 
small, tear-stained face bent over sums which 
“ wouldn’t come right”; and when she suggested 
once that they should be put away and that Phyllida 
should amuse herself with her colour-box instead, she 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 133 

was told sobbingly that Miss Johnston had said that 
she must not play about and waste her time until her 
work was finished, and that though drawing was a very 
pleasant pastime, and she was good at it, she must 
not let it take the place of more useful things. 

Patricia Ellen could help her but little. Her own 
education, conducted by two small maiden ladies in 
a small house in a small street in Swindon, was of a 
vanishing type even in her childhood days. The three 
Royal R’s— the third of which had never dreamed 
of developing into “ mathematics ”— Scripture; a 
modest acquaintance with geography and English his¬ 
tory; a meticulous attention to manners and plain 
needlework; such was her mental equipment when she 
left school at the age of fifteen. Richard Cooksey did 
not believe in a lot of fal-lals as would put her beyond 
her station and make her think herself too fine to 
clean out a room. Of Education with a capital E she 
knew nothing: the methods of Miss Johnston, and the 
terms employed in some of even small Phyllida’s 
books, were beyond her. She could only cosset her 
baby, and hint to Miss Johnston, somewhat command- 
ingly, at the summer prize-giving, that she thought 
the home work was too much for Phyllida, and that 
she did not consider the child’s drawing a waste of 
time. 

There were other school arrangements the child 
liked better; half holiday conducted excursions to the 
many spots in and around the City where history has 


134 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


been made, or where mental food values may be as¬ 
similated. Included on one occasion was the Art 
Gallery, where Phyllida was lost for a time, and was 
discovered gazing in rapt adoration on Didier Pouget’s 
great “ Heather at Correze.” Before Christmas, how¬ 
ever, Patricia Ellen had come to dread the excursions 
even more than the home lessons. Modern education¬ 
alists aim at Developing the Imagination of the Child, 
and Miss Johnston and her staff were nothing if not 
modern. Vivid word pictures of the Queen’s Square 
Riots; Cabot’s Voyage; Bristol in the Civil War. One 
lecture excursion after another found Phyllida over 
tired, over excited, talking feverishly, dreaming still 
more feverishly. Patricia Ellen, at her wits’ end, 
sought counsel of Nora, with whom she had established 
a friendship of sorts, based chiefly on the fact that 
Nora was keeping a crippled husband out of her wages 
and tips; but Nora could give scant comfort. 

“ It’s an awful worry for you, Mrs. Haddendon, and 
you’d think anybody with a grain of sense would see 
that the poor little thing isn’t well and can’t stand it; 
but they’re all alike in schools. My young sister won a 
scholarship at the County School down at my home; 
and she used to come in afternoons so fagged she 
couldn’t eat nor sleep neither; and then if you say 
a word, like Mother did, they tell you you’re stand¬ 
ing in the children’s light.” 

Patricia Ellen considered expedient after expedient. 
Victoria Street was not a good place for the child to 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 135 

live, she knew; it was too shut up, and far too noisy. 
She wondered if she could get her out into the country, 
or even to a house with a garden. Cousin Sarah would 
have had her at Uffcott; would have welcomed her 
gladly; but there would be only a village school, and 
no possibility of drawing lessons; that would not do 
for Timothy’s child. Lodgings in one of the high- 
standing suburbs, or boarding-school at the sea for 
Phyllida alone, were both out of the question on her 
present means; it was all she could do to pay the day 
school fees and extras, and meet the current expenses. 
In a moment of desperate courage she hinted to James 
Fullerton of a rise in her salary, giving some explana¬ 
tion of the why and wherefore; but was told sweetly 
that he was afraid that it was more than he could 
afford. 

“ You see, Mrs. Haddendon,” he purred, “ it would 
make a considerable difference. When one deals in 
foodstuffs in the quantities which we handle here, the 
amount consumed by two people is not appreciable; 
the same with the rooms; but to increase your hon¬ 
orarium sufficiently to allow of rooms and board for 
two people elsewhere — why, Mrs. Haddendon, that 
would mean at least another hundred pounds a year 
in addition to the eighty-five pounds you are now re¬ 
ceiving. I don’t mean for a moment to insinuate, dear 
Mrs. Haddendon, that even that amount would be 
more than your due, but it would be more than I should 
feel myself justified in paying.” 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


136 

Thus Mr. James Fullerton, at present contemplating 
the purchase of a nice compact little estate in the 
neighbourhood of Keynsham. 

Christmas came and went. Phyllida brightened 
through the holidays, resumed her romps with the fox 
terrier (whose appearance at eighteen months old 
suggested that enquiry into the morals of his mother 
would be a tactless proceeding) and somewhat of her 
old chatter. But with the commencement of the term 
she drooped again; began to sleep badly and dream 
the old nightmarish dreams; began also to shrink 
nervously from the noise and clatter of Bristol streets; 
to preface every walk with: “ Let’s go somewhere 
quiet, Mummie,” till Patricia Ellen’s whole being 
ached with the frantic desire for money; more money, 
that should give her darling the ease she craved. 
There seemed so much money in the world, divided 
amongst so few people. She felt sometimes as if she 
hated the well-dressed, well-fed frequenters of Fuller¬ 
ton’s; the men who studied wine lists with a care they 
would not give to their Bibles; the women who wore 
furs that would have paid for country lodgings twice 
over. 

She picked up a Studio one day which had been left 
by chance in the lounge, and found therein an article, 
signed by Herbert Loder, on “ The Art of Timothy 
Haddendon,” which spoke of some recent art sale when 
that last picture of Timothy’s, the “ Cloud-shadows,” 
had changed hands for some five hundred and fifty 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 137 

pounds. She read, stupefied. What was the “ Gap in 
the Hills ” worth then? though it was out of the ques¬ 
tion that she should sell that. But why could not 
some appreciation like that have come in Timothy’s 
lifetime, when it might have saved him? 

She had been perturbed for some time, too, over 
Elsie Mitchell. The girl had quieted down in her 
working hours; no fault could be found with her be¬ 
haviour, her waiting was as deft and quick as Nora’s 
own, but none the less, Patricia Ellen was uneasy. She 
noticed, and was not alone in noticing, that Mr. Con¬ 
way always took his lunch at one of Elsie’s tables. 
It was nothing, she told herself; most men kept to 
their own table and their own waitress; but there was 
an indefinable something in the manner of those two 
that was different. Elsie was using a new brooch to 
fasten her collar that might have been paste, but 
looked extraordinarily like diamonds. Once, in 
December, when she and Phyllida had gone shopping 
in Wine Street, she was certain she saw them turning 
into the Clare Street Picture House as she passed it. 
What should a man of Conway’s position be doing in 
the cheaper seats of a picture show on a Saturday 
evening? And once again, as she and Phyllida entered 
College Green one Sunday on their way to morning 
service at the Cathedral, she was convinced she caught 
a flashing glimpse of them in a taxi, making for Park 
Street and presumably, the Downs. 

Irritably she argued that it was no business of hers. 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


138 

If Arthur Conway, head of the great shipping firm 
of Conway and Leverson, with a wife whose social 
ambitions equalled his commercial ones, if such a man 
chose to make a fool of himself over a pretty waitress, 
well, it was his funeral. And for the girl herself, she 
had been warned: she was not an inexperienced child, 
not by the width of a very wide road; she had a good 
and comfortable, if a plain, home with some cousins 
who kept a secondhand furniture shop down in Red- 
cliffe Street; there was no reason why Patricia Ellen 
should feel responsibility for her. 

But she did. That haunting likeness to Phyllida 
persisted; accompanied by the fact that the girl was 
looking ill. Her eyes, the brilliant eyes in the small 
pointed face, were growing tragic. Patricia Ellen was 
beset by black suspicions; caught Nora looking at the 
girl once or twice with a furtive, unspoken question, 
and swift exchange of thought flashed between the two 
women. Nora also ascertained the fact, and communi¬ 
cated it to her manageress with overdone casualness, 
that Elsie was no longer living with the cousins in 
Redcliffe Street, but in furnished lodgings at Horfield, 
which, although not approaching to Sneyd Park or 
Clifton, could not be paid for out of the earnings of 
a junior waitress. 

Finally, James Fullerton came to her one day at 
the beginning of March in a state of perturbation that 
forgot to be urbane, to demand her attention to, and 
investigation of, a report that had come to his ears 
that there was “ a connection, a — a — liaison, Mrs. 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 139 

Haddendon, between Mr. Arthur Conway and one of 
our waitresses.” 

Patricia Ellen stood and waited; she guessed what 
was coming. Determinedly she fixed her eyes upon 
the daffodils of the table decorations immediately in 
front of her; though she felt as if a magnet were 
drawing them to Elsie’s tables on the other side of the 
room. 

“ It is being talked of in every club in Bristol,” 
Fullerton fumed; “enough to ruin the restaurant. If 
it had been a nobody, a customer at the Quick Lunch 
Counter, it wouldn’t have mattered in the least; but 
Conway , High Sheriff, and probably Lord Mayor next 
year, one of the greatest names in the City. I wish to 
heaven I had heard of it sooner. I don’t wish to blame 
you unjustly, Mrs. Haddendon; but I think you should 
have been more careful! ” 

“What can I do?” asked Patricia Ellen sharply: 
she was nettled. “ I have always understood that my 
supervision duties ceased at closing time; that what 
happened afterwards outside did not concern the man¬ 
agement. I can’t possibly keep any sort of watch 
over the girls at night, unless you have them to live 
in; there has been nothing wrong in the day, I am sure 
of that.” (Fiercely she told herself that it was true; 
there had been nothing, looks and suppositions were 
not evidence; besides, let Fullerton do his dirty work 
himself.) “ Have you any idea which of the girls it 
is? ” she asked. 

“ I have heard her spoken of,” disgustedly, “ as a 


140 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


little slip of a thing; and as ‘ Conway’s bright-eyed 
charmer.’ Beyond that, none whatever; that is why 
I have come to you. You surely must have seen 
something or guessed something; if not, you must 
make enquiries until you do find out.” 

Patricia Ellen calmly determined that she would do 
nothing of the sort. It would be impossible to shield 
Elsie much longer; useless to attempt it if gossip had 
risen to this pitch; and she was not going to risk any¬ 
thing of her own position with James Fullerton: he 
was like a ruffled cock-sparrow now. But she cer¬ 
tainly was not going to turn detective in the evenings, 
and she made that fact patent to his understanding 
without delay. Her evenings belonged to Phyllida. 

James Fullerton’s urbanity became a still more 
minus quantity. “ Well, you must do something,” 
he snarled. “ The girl must be identified and dis¬ 
missed. Don’t you see. . . .” 

He broke off sharply; a portentous silence followed. 
Patricia Ellen saw his little gimlet eyes narrow and 
focus themselves on some object; followed his glance 
and caught her breath, growing crimson with dismay 
and shame. They were standing by her desk, which 
was on a tiny raised platform, behind a glass partition 
in one corner of the big dining-room; it was about 
half-past two, and a Saturday afternoon, and the room 
was thinning out; half the waitresses were standing 
idle; it was too early to be setting teas, besides, not 
many were wanted on a Saturday. Elsie Mitchell was 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 141 

standing idle with the rest; she was in profile between 
them and a window, leaning back with her hands be¬ 
hind her. The thin, strained young face; the outline 
of the body, the utter weariness of the limbs; all were 
thrown up in sharpest relief, and all alike shrieked 
her wretched secret aloud. 

James Fullerton looked from the scarlet face of the 
woman to the white one of the girl, and nodded. 

“ So that is it, is it? ” he said; “ and you had, as I 
thought, some inkling. Another time you will be more 
prompt, Mrs. Haddendon, if you please.’’ 

His urbanity returned; Patricia Ellen would have 
pleaded something, urged some mercy, but she was 
afraid, and even for pity’s sake, she dared not offend 
him. She was still considering what she could say 
when his voice sounded again with the purr back in it. 

“ I think we need look no further, Mrs. Haddendon. 
Will you be good enough to tell me the amount the 
young woman receives weekly? Thank you,” as Patri¬ 
cia Ellen with dry lips gave the required information. 
“She has not yet received her week’s wages? No: 
then twice that amount, and I can dispense with the 
week’s notice. Now, my dear Mrs. Haddendon, please 
make no objection; sentimental considerations cannot 
be allowed to interfere with the right conduct of a 
business.” 

He beckoned to the girl at the far table, and taking 
his note-case and some silver out of his pocket began to 
count out the two weeks’ wages. 


CHAPTER III 


J ULY again; hardly grilling, the air was not suffi¬ 
ciently dry, more stewing. Lurid coppery clouds 
hanging low over the City and pressing the 
smoke and the gas fumes, and the stench of tanneries 
and manure works and rotting slime in the river, down 
upon streets and lanes that thought they had escaped 
it: promise of a thunderstorm that had been threaten¬ 
ing for three days and refused to break and clear the 
air; everybody’s nerves strung to breaking point, irri¬ 
table and overdone. 

At Fullerton’s Patricia Ellen showed signs of wear. 
The sulphurous, heavy air had given her a headache 
and indigestion, and in all the years she had been there, 
she had never had such a three days as the last. A 
certain Royal Personage was to receive the Freedom of 
the City on the morrow; he was to drive from Temple 
Meads to the Colston Hall — outside in Victoria Street, 
flags and festoons hung limp in the heavy air — be 
entertained at a luncheon; inspect various points of 
social interest in Bristol, and finish at the Zoological 
Gardens with a gigantic garden party given by the 
Lord Mayor and Sheriffs. For both of the edible parts 
of the programme Fullerton’s had the contract, and for 
142 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 143 

a week the entire management of the restaurant had 
fallen on Patricia Ellen. They had been particularly 
busy, too, for Bristol was thronged with visitors to 
see the Royal Personage and the decorations. Then 
the head counter assistant at the Quick Lunch had 
been taken ill; she had had three bad nights with Phyl- 
lida, and she was tired to death. 

Never had she longed so ardently for open quiet 
spaces, for pure air, for a “ Haven amongst the Winds 
of God.” Why, she asked herself furiously, should 
she have to slave like this to keep her child; stuffing 
the stomachs of these over-fed fools with luxuries they 
would be far better without. And to watch them, to 
see them turning up their noses at the rich, expensive 
food; sniffing and peering at the wines. 

“ Old girl at number eight wants to speak to you,” 
said Nora’s voice in her ear. “ Oh, some fool com¬ 
plaint or other; too much vinegar, I should think.” 

She went wearily to number eight; it had been one 
of Elsie Mitchell’s tables, and she wondered for the 
thousandth time what had become of the girl. Sir 
Arthur — he had been made a baronet at the last 
Birthday Honours — Sir Arthur and Lady Conway 
were among the hosts at the garden party that after¬ 
noon; she hoped viciously that he would get wet. She 
received the complaint; something about the over 
hardness or over softness or over something of a 
Meringue-cognac; she did not trouble which; apolo¬ 
gized frostily, explaining that the kitchen staff were 


144 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


short-handed owing to the banquet, and promised that 
due allowance should be made on the bill. 

“ Don’t it make you sick! ” said Nora, beside her 
again. “ There’s been another hullaballoo over at 
thirty-three. They were sent forty-seven port instead 
of forty-nine; and what they’re spending on their 
lunch would send your kiddie away to the sea for a 
couple of months or give my man some of the treat¬ 
ment he wants.” 

“ He’s no better, Nora? ” 

“ Never will be, as he goes on at present; but we’ve 
got no money to pay for anything more.” 

Patricia Ellen turned to go through to the Quick 
Lunch Counter, catching a fragment of conversation 
on the way. 

“ Yes, we’re sending Nurse and the children to 
Weymouth for six weeks. Henry and I want to go 
up the Fjords and back through Sweden and the Lakes, 
and it would be nothing for the children.” 

Why should they all have so much? 

She had reached the door when she became aware 
of a disturbance outside; a hubbub of voices, a sharp, 
suddenly extinguished cry from some animal in agony; 
wild screams from a frightened, hysterical child; and 
a little figure came flying through the outer door of the 
restaurant, shrieking frantically for “ Mummie! 
Mummie! ” 

Patricia Ellen rushed and caught her; the shrieks 
continued; came shrill, gasping cries of: “ The puppy; 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 145 

oh, they’ve killed him; he wanted me, and oh, he was 
all cut open, and bleeding. Oh! Mummie, Mummie! 
And his eye was gone, and they’ve killed him! Oh, 
why wasn’t it me?” followed by incoherent sobs and 
moans. 

A little eruption of people from the street, all ex¬ 
plaining at once; a small crowd of luncheoners prof¬ 
fering wine and restoratives for Phyllida; an agitated 
hatless young man, saying miserably that he couldn’t 
ever tell how sorry he was; but he thought the dog 
must have seen the little girl coming from some win¬ 
dow; and he rushed out from the side entrance right 
under the car; couldn’t stop it anyhow; and the poor 
little beast was so frightfully mangled that the kindest 
thing was to finish him off at once: a maze of clamour 
all round, amid which the one thing of which Patricia 
Ellen was conscious was the little, shaking, horror- 
maddened form in her arms, and the exact likeness of 
the face on her shoulder to the one that had lain on 
her shoulder ten and a half years ago in a cottage 
bedroom on the Beckhampton road. 

Blindly she turned, and made for the inner door 
and her private staircase; her heart like lead within 
her. First husband, and then child. 

“ Oh, Phyllida dear, don’t cry so; I don’t think the 
poor puppy could have suffered much.” 

Nora’s voice again saying she had sent for a doc¬ 
tor; her own room and privacy; and a fresh outbreak 
of screams at the sight of the puppy’s chair and 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


146 

cushion — these things detached themselves from the 
blur; but neither cleared the chaos of her mind. 

The doctor came, administered sedatives, and went, 
saying he would call again in the morning. Through 
the night she listened to Phyllida’s wandering talk. 
The sedatives and her mother’s comforting had stopped 
the child’s crying, and checked the hysteria that 
threatened to overwhelm her. She had been able to 
explain that her head had ached so, Miss Johnston 
had told her to go home after morning school, which 
was how she came to be in Victoria Street at that 
time of day. She had even slept a little, but the nerve 
strain was extreme, and the City clocks chimed many 
times to an accompaniment of restless muttering, 
broken by sobs. 

Patricia Ellen forgot the passage of time; took no 
heed of the Royal Personage next day, except to be 
thankful that Victoria Street was closed to traffic from 
twelve to one o’clock, and again in the afternoon, so 
that there was a little more quiet than usual. To her 
work downstairs she gave not a thought; she was 
entirely concentrated on Phyllida. 

It was not until the morning of the third day, the 
Thursday, that the facts of life obtruded themselves 
on her notice. Mr. James Fullerton was the first; an 
unpleasant, mean little fact; who presented himself 
in Patricia’s sitting-room at ten-thirty a.m. ostensibly 
to enquire for Phyllida; but following politeness with 
reality very quickly, by hoping that Mrs. Haddendon 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 147 

would find it convenient to descend shortly, as all 
goods would be returning from Colston Hall that day, 
and would have to be checked in. 

Mr. Fullerton was never quite sure how it was he 
found himself out on the staircase again so quickly, 
nor why he had agreed meekly to having Nora sent 
up to receive instructions with regard to the check¬ 
ing-in; certainly he had never before realized that 
Mrs. Haddendon was so tall and imposing a woman. 
A most useful woman, but he had always been afraid 
the child would be a nuisance, and events were prov¬ 
ing him right. 

Left to herself, Patricia Ellen breathed deeply, the 
light of battle in her eyes. She was not unreasonable: 
she knew it was intensely inconvenient for her to re¬ 
main out of the business that morning; but she could 
not help it. The doctor was coming to give Phyllida 
a thorough overhauling; he was not satisfied, the 
death of a pet, though a great grief, especially to an 
affectionate and sensitive child, ought not to have 
produced such complete prostration; so upstairs her 
mother must stay till he had been. Two hours later 
he had come and gone, and Patricia Ellen was stand¬ 
ing again by her sitting-room window, grappling des¬ 
perately with the difficulties of the situation, or rather 
difficulty, for they all resolved themselves into the 
one that had bulked so large in the last eighteen 
months — money. 

Dr. Hartley was a picture lover, and the “ Gap 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


148 

between the Hills,” on which his eyes fell when he 
entered the bedroom, had, together with a few ques¬ 
tions, given him the clue to Phyllida’s mentality, and 
a great interest in the child herself; so that by the time 
he had finished his examination he had arrived at 
a very just estimate of her make-up. Phyllida was 
better that morning; giggled ecstatically over the re¬ 
curring “ Say ninety-nine,” and was inclined to talk. 

“ There is nothing organically wrong,” he told her 
mother. “ Lungs and heart are sound, though not 
robust; it’s the nervous system chiefly at fault.” He 
proceeded to details and technicalities, but the upshot 
of it was, that if Phyllida was to grow up a healthy 
woman, she must spend the next five or six years in 
the country, in quiet surroundings and pure, bracing 
air. If she stayed in her present environment all the 
care in the world could never make her strong. 

“ It’s easy to give instructions,” he finished. “ I 
can patch her up with a tonic, of course; but the plain 
truth in such cases is the kindest, and it’s the plain 
truth I have told you, Mrs. Haddendon; I wish I could 
have made it pleasanter.” 

Five or six years in the country! She looked out 
of the window at the stormy wrack of clouds. Two 
pigeons fluttered for a moment into sight, caught a 
flash of light on their wings, wheeled round St. Mary’s 
spire, and fluttered away. She recalled something she 
had heard at one of the concerts Timothy had taken 
her to. “ In the wilderness, build me a nest-” 



THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 149 

If she only could; it would be so cheap and easy. The 
world was very hard on women. 

The gleam of sunshine faded, and rain began to 
fall heavily. The thunderstorm had broken the previ¬ 
ous afternoon, just as the garden party was in full 
swing, and she had had her wish, Sir Arthur Conway 
had got very wet indeed. She wondered again in the 
midst of her perplexities what had become of Elsie; 
never a word or sign from the girl since she had walked 
out of the restaurant that Saturday afternoon, with 
two weeks’ wages in her pocket and a ten shilling note 
of Patricia Ellen’s in her hand, thrust there furtively 
in saying good-bye. 

Hard on the heels of the thought came a knock at 
the door, and one of the waitresses entered with a 
grubby note: she opened it as she went back to Phyl- 
lida and read: 

‘ Dear Mrs. Haddendon, 

You’ll probably think it cheek, my writing, but I’m 
stranded; right at the end of everything, and I’ve got 
a chance to get clear if you’ll help me. Could you 
come and see me some time Sunday? I know you can’t 
get out much before then. 

Elsie Mitchell/ 

The address was care of Mrs. Ranger, Princess 
Amelia Court, and a postcript added that it was the 
first on the right and respectable, and that she needn’t 
reply. If she didn’t come, the writer would know 
she didn’t feel inclined to do anything. 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


150 

Patricia Ellen debated the question at intervals dur¬ 
ing the next two days, when she was not debating her 
own question. She showed the note to Nora, who of¬ 
fered to come and stay with Phyllida for the time, and 
finally she decided to go. She could give the girl no 
money; with that dictum of “ fresh country air ” in 
her ears, she grudged even the ten shilling note; but 
she might be able to help her in other ways, and in any 
case she would like to know how she fared, the address 
did not sound prosperous. 

Chiefly, however, she was occupied with her own 
concerns: open country; fresh, bracing air; congenial 
surroundings; five years: over and over again the 
phrases spoke themselves; and drumming alongside 
them came: school bills so much, clothes so much, 
board and lodging so much; available capital, three 
hundred and fifty pounds. Could she spend it on 
sending Phyllida to boarding-school? Should she take 
a house by the sea, or in some inland place with “ pure, 
bracing air,” and let apartments? Could she do any¬ 
thing with poultry? One by one she considered the 
schemes. Once she thought of applying to Loder; art 
students might come as paying guests to Timothy 
Haddendon’s widow; but that idea she dismissed, they 
would not pay enough. The others she contemplated 
distastefully; she might make a success of either, but 
she would have to sink a good proportion of her cap¬ 
ital first, and she was strongly averse to the thought. 
She came of the genuine old peasant stock, in whom 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 151 

thrift is ingrained, part of the soil from which they 
spring, to whom the parting with savings is the first 
step on the road to bankruptcy. A man might do it 
to buy a farm, but for a woman to spend invested 
capital was the height of risk, a form of gambling not 
to be lightly undertaken. Patricia Ellen shared the 
feeling to the full, yet what else could she do? A post 
similar to her present one could only be obtained in 
a large town; at least, other openings would be few 
and far between, and a large town offered nothing 
that the doctor had ordered for Phyllida. 

She was still feverishly weighing pros and cons when 
Nora came in on Sunday evening, and she started out 
to see Elsie Mitchell. 

“ Tom’s got a chum come in to see him, Mrs. Had- 
dendon,” the younger woman said; “so you stay out 
and get a good walk; I shan’t have to hurry.” 

The name of Princess Amelia Court rouses visions 
of old-world stateliness and grace; of powdered, satin- 
clad ladies, and frilly, shoe-buckled men; of spacious 
flag-walked gardens, with fountains playing, and in 
the distance the sounds of violins and harpsichord giv¬ 
ing out the measure of a minuet or a courante. The 
reality is different. 

Princess Amelia Court lies in Pipe Lane, at the back 
of the Colston Hall, turning round by the offices of 
the Bristol Gas Company. A narrow, low archway 
and four breakneck steps lead into it; they were pos¬ 
sibly placed there in the cause of temperance; any- 


152 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


thing so awkward must, one would think, have a good 
reason at the back of it. The inhabitants of the Court 
might, when they came up for air into Pipe Lane, 
catch a snatch of melody if there was a concert in 
progress at Colston Hall; otherwise their music was 
the clanking of the printing presses in Trenchard Street 
a few steps further on. The neighbourhood abounds 
in children and smells. There are worse places; it 
does not take long to lose sight of the haunts of gilded 
respectability in Bristol, and here there is, at least, a 
glimpse of the trees in Colston Avenue, as soon as one 
has rounded the corner of the Gas Offices. But it 
is not at best an inspiring locality, and on that Sunday 
evening it struck Patricia Ellen as sordid and depress¬ 
ing in the extreme. Children in various degrees of 
dirt were squatting on the pavement and playing in 
the gutter: there was one on the top step under the 
archway sucking a stick of peppermint rock, which 
added dribbling streaks of pink sugar to the grime 
which adorned his face. At the bottom she tripped 
on a trodden banana skin and nearly fell headlong. 

Elsie was looking out for her, and admitted her 
without delay into a frowsy, ill-kept room, which smelt 
of dirt, boots and hair oil. There was a make-shift 
bed in one corner, a Beatrice oil-stove and a dilapi¬ 
dated kettle in another: a chair and a deal table with 
one leg propped up on half a brick completed the 
furniture, and the sole attempt at ornament was a 
bunch of paper flowers which had self-evidently been 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 153 

the home of generations of flies. Walls, floor, ceiling 
and the piece of rag which excluded public gaze at the 
window, were all a deep drab. 

Elsie herself looked thin and haggard, but self pos¬ 
sessed, not a subject for sympathy, and nothing of 
the “ poor dear ” about her. They were both silent 
a minute, neither quite knowing what to say. Then: 

“ It was good of you to come,” said Elsie politely 
It was palpably a conversational make-weight, and 
Patricia Ellen took the bull by the horns. 

“ I had better say at once,” she stated, “ that I 
can’t give you any money, Elsie; my little girl is ill, 
and I haven’t a penny to spare: but if I can help you 
in any other way, I will; and I would like to know how 
you have got on, and how — I mean-” she stam¬ 

mered, embarrassed: “where did you — what have 
you-? ” 

The eyes opposite her on the bed grew a shade more 
defiant. “ You mean the baby? ” asked its mother. 
“ That was — well, one can call it ‘ settled ’ some little 
while back. I suppose you’ll be shocked.” 

Patricia Ellen felt sick; the fact itself was bad 
enough; the whole vile, sordid story was bad enough; 
but the girl’s callousness was worse than all. And the 
dreadful distorted likeness to Phyllida was stronger 
than ever. 

“ What else could I do? ” the other went on, her 
voice growing harder. “ It was that, or the Work- 
house Infirmary later on, and then what next? What 




PATRICIA ELLEN 


154 

chance for me or the child? Conway gave me fifty 
pounds when he chucked me overboard at the end of 
February, and I had some jewellery. I thought it 
would have lasted longer — one thing, I’d reckoned on 
staying at Fullerton’s longer — but I was very ill, 
and had to have a good many extras. In any case, 
how long would it have held out for me and a baby? 
And what could I have done when it was gone? Left 
the child in a home, I suppose, and been a servant, 
always watched for bad behaviour because of my past. 
Why should I do that, and he go scot-free? Host to 
a royal Prince and going to be Lord Mayor! ” She 
laughed cynically. “ I went up to the Zoo on Wednes¬ 
day, and stood in the crowd and watched him go in: 
he’d got an orchid in his buttonhole that would have 
kept me for a week. I saw Fullerton, too, with his 
mean, smug little face — how I hate that man! I’d 
like to get him in my power and show him just as 
much mercy as he showed me.” 

Patricia Ellen sat shamefaced and miserable. It 
was all wrong somehow, and she had not the words 
to explain how; indeed, she did not know what to 
say at all. Approve she could not; it was of no use 
moralizing; sympathy seemed out of place. She 
stumbled on to an enquiry as to where the girl had 
been. 

“ I’d best not say anything about that,” was the 
reply. “ The people were kind, and the less anybody 
knows about that bit of history, the better.” 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 155 

Tongue-tied dumbness followed again: Patricia 
Ellen remembered a small school-girl joke on such 
occasions: “ Silence in the pig market, let the old sow 
speak first ” — remembered also some dim legend as to 
the passing of angels’ wings in such pauses. There did 
not seem much scope for angels in the present circum¬ 
stances; the school-girl joke was more suitable. 

Elsie spoke at last abruptly: 

“ I’d better tell you why I wanted to see you,” she 
said. “ I’ve got a chance of a job; sort of waitress- 
shop-assistant, not much of a show; home-made sweets 
and cakes, teas and lemonade, but it’s better than 
nothing. Live in, so I shouldn’t have lodgings to pay 
for. It’s up by the Black Boy, so it’s out of your 
range, and I shouldn’t have bothered you, only they 
want a reference. The old girl who runs the place 
rather jumped at me when she heard I’d been at 
Fullerton’s. I told her the work there was too much 
for me; I’d had to leave last March because I was 
overdone, and had to have a rest, and I didn’t think it 
would be much use her applying to Mr. Fullerton for 
a reference, because he had almost nothing to do with 
the waitresses; but that you would give me one.” 

“ What could I say? ” 

“ Say? The usual things, of course; that I was 
honest and capable and steady. Oh, you needn’t be 
afraid. It’ll be quite true. I’ve had my fun ; and the 
Lord knows I’ve paid for it, and I don’t want any 
more. The next man I get off with, if I get out of this 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


156 

hole, will be married to me good and tight. Now I 
suppose you’re shocked again. Why shouldn’t I? Do 
you think Sir High Sheriff Conway would hesitate if 
he wasn’t married already? Why shouldn’t I get mar¬ 
ried after as well as he before? It’s not so bad, to my 
way of thinking. I tell you,” she leant forward, her 
face dark and tense; “if I can get a decent home 
again, I shall get it; I don’t care how, and marriage 
would be quickest. I’ve enough money to stay here 
another week; after that, if you’re too good to help 
me, well, it’ll be the streets, there’s nothing else. I’d 
get food and clothing for a time, and there’s always 
the Suspension Bridge.” 

Patricia Ellen argued the problem out. To give 
a false reference, and to do so with the authority of 
her high business position behind her — she hated the 
thought. She had been hard and bitter and callous; 
but in her blackest moments she had never let go her 
scrupulous honesty. It was largely that quality which 
had given her her reputation, and she knew it: knew 
that her word, mere paid servant though she was, 
would carry weight with all who had ever had business 
dealings with her. And she was asked to depart from 
that honesty; to certify a girl as steady whom she 
knew had not been steady; who, though she might 
keep a socially straight course for the future, would 
do so, not because of any spiritual urging, but because 
the price of deviation was higher than she cared to 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 157 

pay. Patricia Ellen felt she could not do it; and yet — 
the alternative! She looked out of that part of the 
window which was not obscured by dirt and dirty rag. 
One of the lady residents of Princess Amelia Court 
was shaking a dust-laden rug outside her neighbour’s 
door, and the latter had left the almost visible bloaters 
she was almost visibly cooking to express an opinion of 
the rug owner, of which the fact that she was “ makin’ 
the place into a blasted stinkin’ muck ’eap ” was the 
only repeatable section. The lady of the rug retaliated 
in kind; the boy with the pink sugar stick, who appar¬ 
ently belonged to her of the bloaters, strolled down 
and instructed his maternal parent to “ go it,” and was 
promptly told, with sanguinary illustrations, to “ get 
out, you little devil.” Whereupon, he returned to the 
top step, giving utterance to a canine term not usually 
applied to ladies in polite society, and the two resumed 
their argument. 

“ D’you wonder I want to get out of it? ” said Elsie, 
with her reckless laugh. “ I oughtn’t to have brought 
you here, but I wanted you to see what it was like.” 

Patricia Ellen shivered, trying to shut ears and eyes. 
At the far end of the Court a man lounged into view, 
with a half-starved lurcher at his heels, which he 
kicked brutally when the poor wretch stopped to in¬ 
vestigate some garbage in the gutter. The lady of 
the bloaters, who appeared to be dispensing even- 
handed justice to all and sundry that afternoon, told 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


158 

him shrilly that he was a damned brute, and she hoped 
the dog’d tear his throat open; while over the resultant 
clamour rose the wail of a child from the room over 
Elsie’s. 

Patricia Ellen looked back into the room again. 
How could she condemn a girl — a girl with face and 
eyes like Phyllida’s — to this and worse than this? 
Be the cause of it and the justice of it what they might, 
the two shared a common womanhood, and she could 
not. She got up to go. 

“ I will give you the reference, Elsie,” she said 
quietly; “you shall have it to-morrow. I can’t say 
I think you are right in what you’ve done, or in what 
you mean to do, but I will give you the reference.” 

Out in the street, breathing thankfully the air of 
Colston Avenue — at all events it smelt of nothing 
worse than petrol — she sat down on a bench under the 
trees to think. One fact had settled itself definitely 
in that interview; she would not sell out any of her 
little capital. Suppose the business venture, what¬ 
ever she might decide on, should not be a success; 
suppose anything happened to her that she became 
crippled like Nora’s husband, or died, and Phyllida 
were left stranded as that girl back there was stranded 
— oh, God, the thought of it! It would not be from 
the same cause; Phyllida’s mother felt reasonably 
certain of that; but if the child should ever be faced 
by the same choice? A man can sell his small posses¬ 
sions, and when they are gone can lie or steal for 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 159 

bread, and the world pities him; but a woman has that 
last worst temptation, when all else fails she can 
always, be it young enough and fair enough, sell her 
body. If Timothy’s baby should ever be in danger 
of that! 

No; come what might, the money should stay for 
Phyllida. If the worse came to the worst, if by no 
other means could she wring a larger income out of a 
stony-hearted world, she must write to Loder, offer to 
let him sell The Gap in the Hills, and use the money 
to send Phyllida to boarding school. She clenched 
her hands, and bit her lips with pain. To part with 
that which Timothy, and she for his sake, had held 
so sacred! She would only do it as a last resource, but 
if there was no other — 

Against her will, tears were forcing themselves out. 
She must not return to Phyllida like that; desperately 
she looked round for means to distract her attention 
and make her control herself. There was a paper ly¬ 
ing on the seat beside her, and she picked it up. It 
was a Wilts and Gloucester Standard, open at the ad¬ 
vertisement page, and she idly scanned it down. Sud¬ 
denly she started; read an advertisement closely, once 
and once again. Dear Heaven, was it — if it might 
only be — the way out. 

Wanted, housekeeper, in drapery establishment 
where assistants live in; entire charge; good salary to 
competent woman. Apply, Gideon Brothers, Market 
Place, Cirencester, Glos. 


160 PATRICIA ELLEN 

Cirencester. She did not know the place well, but 
she had passed through it once in a motor char-a-banc 
trip with Phyllida; and clearly she remembered the 
wide, open country that lay around it, the quaint old 
houses, the quiet streets, the great square tower of the 
Abbey. Who and what were Gideon Brothers she 
had not the remotest idea, it did not matter; Ciren¬ 
cester was country with air of the purest and most 
bracing. Hurriedly she looked at the top of the paper, 
praying that it might not be an old one; it bore date 
of the previous day. She sprang to her feet, holding 
the precious paper tightly, and nearly ran for the 
Tramway Centre. St. Stephen’s was striking seven; 
she could get a letter off that night. 


CHAPTER IV 


G IDEON BROTHERS — John and Maurice of 
that name — sat in their office, hesitating 
over applications from would-be housekeepers; 
two worried young men of twenty-nine and twenty- 
seven respectively; trying to decide by the unaided 
light of their undomesticated minds whether to pro¬ 
ceed with Mrs. Smith, widow, fifty-nine, late of a 
boarding house in Cheltenham: with Miss Aylwin, 
twenty-five, Domestic Training College, Gloucester: 
or with Mrs. Haddendon, widow, forty-six, one child, 
Fullerton’s Restaurant, Bristol. 

“ I feel half inclined to go for the Cheltenham one, 
John,” said the younger brother; “ seems to me she’s 
more the kind we want. She must be a practical sort 
of body if she’s been running a boarding house; this 

Aylwin one’s a bit young-” 

“ I’m not going to have her,” from John de¬ 
cisively — 

“-and the child would be a nuisance with the 

other, I think. Still, you do as you like, old man. It 
concerns you more than me; I shan’t have more than 
a week or two of the lady, even if she comes at once; 
and so long as there’s someone to look after the girls 
161 





i 62 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


and the cooking’s a bit better than it has been lately, 
it doesn’t much matter who’s bossing the show.” 

John Gideon put the letters side by side and read 
them again. Seen by the light of the office gas, he 
appeared as a large-framed, athletic young man, who 
would probably acquire adipose tissue in the forties; 
fresh of colour; honest of eye; sulky of mouth; more 
generous than his smaller, darker, cleverer brother; 
also more uncertain tempered. 

“ I don’t know that I won’t write to the Bristol 
woman first,” he said, still fingering the letters. “ We 
could fall back on Mrs. Smith if nothing came of the 
other; but if she owns to fifty-nine she’s probably 
well over sixty, and in a few months she’d find the 
stairs try her legs or something. Ten years at a place 
like Fullerton’s is a pretty good reference.” 

“ That’s why I’m thinking she’ll look down on this.” 

“ Well, she’s applied for it, and gives her reasons 
for wanting to leave Bristol. I wish to goodness Rose 
would have come and managed; but so long as she — 
er — can’t, I must make the best arrangement I can.” 

“ Rose isn’t strong enough,” said Rose’s fiance, with 
well-drilled emphasis. 

“ You see, this woman says if we’ll let her have a 
bed-sitting room, she’ll undertake that the child shall 
be no trouble. I’ll write, anyway, and see what comes 
of it.” 

Patricia Ellen received the letter next afternoon; 
answered it; received a reply engaging her, subject to 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 163 

a satisfactory reference, and went immediately to Mr. 
James Fullerton, prepared for conflict. Mr. Fullerton 
greeted her with his smile and: 

“ I am glad to see you, Mrs. Haddendon. I have 
had a letter about which I am somewhat mystified, 
from a firm calling themselves 4 Gideon Brothers ’ 


“ That was why I wished to speak to you: I wish,” 
she announced concisely, “ to give you notice to leave, 
Mr. Fullerton, and to ask you for a reference.” 

James Fullerton slapped his pen down on the paper, 
thereby wasting a sheet, for it blotted. 

“ You wish what? ” he spluttered. 

“ I wish,” Patricia Ellen began again patiently, and 
repeated her statement. 

James Fullerton assumed his best manner. 

“ Of course you know,” he said sweetly, “ that I 
cannot refuse you a reference, and have no choice 
about taking your notice; but surely, dear Mrs. Had¬ 
dendon, this is very abrupt? Perhaps if we have a 
little talk, you may be able to alter this sudden de¬ 
cision.” 

Patricia Ellen stated her reasons, briefly and with 
clearness. “ I have the offer of this post in Ciren¬ 
cester,” she concluded, “ which I have decided to ac¬ 
cept. I shall be writing to-day, and I shall be greatly 
obliged if your reference can go by the same post.” 

“ I hardly think I shall have time to write to-day,” 
with still more sweetness; “there is no need for such 



PATRICIA ELLEN 


164 

haste. I pass over the fact that it is usually customary 
to give one employer notice before seeking service with 
another; that it is considered more polite and honour¬ 
able to do so; but your three months’ notice will give 
ample time for references and all other matters to 
be dealt with.” 

Patricia Ellen cast her second bombshell. 

“ Oh, yes,” she said calmly, “ but under the present 
circumstances I should not be able to give three 
months’ notice. A month either way was the agreed 
time, Mr. Fullerton; which would be the 29th August; 
and as I had arranged with you to take my holiday on 
the 15th, I propose that I leave then. I should be 
willing to accept my salary up to that date only.” 

Mr. Fullerton began to sit up and take notice. He 
argued the point at some length. Patricia Ellen 
listened with what patience she could muster. She was 
quite prepared to admit that he had a grievance over 
the notice; that she had done things in a hurry; that 
she was causing inconvenience; that she had treated 
him with great lack of consideration; she agreed 
cheerfully to all of it; then rose to her feet; she had 
seated herself uninvited in the second office chair. 

“ I must be going back to my work, Mr. Fullerton,” 
she announced. “ We may consider it settled, then, 
that I leave on the 15th? ” (There was a protesting 
growl, which she ignored.) “ And I shall be obliged 
if you will kindly have that reference ready for to¬ 
night’s post.” 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 165 

“ And may I ask/’ acidly, “ if you propose that the 
restaurant should close for a week or two — or what 
do you suggest? You seem to have planned everything 
from your own point of view. It is, of course, quite 
impossible to find a new manageress and train her in 
a fortnight and three days-” 

“ No need.” Patricia Ellen cut him short. “ You 
have your manageress ready trained on the premises 
if you choose to take her.” 

“ Whom do you mean? ” 

“ Mrs. Ellis; Nora.” Patricia Ellen sat down again. 
“ Now, Mr. Fullerton,” she said quietly, “ look at 
this reasonably. You think I am treating you badly; 
possibly I am, but remember I am not doing so for any 
light or selfish reason; and I would not suggest going 
in so short a time if I were not quite sure that Mrs. 
Ellis could perfectly take my place. She has done so, 
twice, when I have been away, and done it well. She 
knows the people who come here as well as I do, and 
is known and liked by them.” 

“ I suppose you have settled all that as well? ” 

“ Certainly not, that is not my business; but I am 
certain she would accept the post if you offered it to 
her; she has to practically keep a crippled husband. 
She would serve you well, and it would save you all the 
trouble and possible expense ” — (“ that will do the 
trick,” she said to herself) — “ of finding someone 
from outside.” 

She left Mr. Fullerton’s office without another word, 


i66 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


feeling fairly confident that her suggestion would take 
root. She would be very glad if it did. Nora had had 
a hard time. She had been married seven years, and 
for more than six of them her husband had been 
crippled, the result of rheumatic fever. He did a 
little basket-making, but Nora’s wages and tips were 
all they really had to depend on; and the extra money 
and free rooms would be a godsend to her. 

Patricia Ellen watched the door of her employer’s 
sanctum out of the corner of her eye. When the lull 
came between luncheons and teas she saw him issue 
forth and call Nora for a private interview. It was 
three-quarters of an hour before she emerged looking 
flushed and agitated and the first teas were beginning 
to dribble in; but she made a dive across the room to 
where Patricia Ellen sat behind her glass screen, and 
poured out such a flood of grateful thanks that her 
composed superior was overwhelmed. 

“ It will make all the difference in the world,” 
Nora said; “ Tom will be able to have some electric 
treatment; it means such a lot to get rooms free. But 
oh, Mrs. Haddendon, I do wish you weren’t going.” 

That seemed, indeed, to be the general plaint, and 
Patricia Ellen was not a little overcome during the 
fortnight that remained to her by the many tokens of 
liking she received. 

None the less, she had no regrets at going. The 
mood of hard and bitter detachment which had held 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 167 

her for so long after her first coming, had gone, never 
to return. Whatever life might hold for her in the 
future she would take it for granted that it held much 
the same for other people, and try to walk in step with 
them accordingly. She had liked the work at Fuller¬ 
ton’s; it had interested her, and she was sincerely grate¬ 
ful for the good feeling she had won. But she was a 
countrywoman to the innermost depths of her, and the 
thought of returning to life among country people, 
to slow, country voices, and every-dayish tweed clothes, 
brought her a thrill of real pleasure, while Phyllida was 
overjoyed. To live in real country, not the carefully 
preserved imitation of Durdham and Clifton Downs, 
with trams and motor cars, and correct children with 
their nurses; but the Real Thing — the thought was 
purest bliss. Patricia Ellen warned her that Ciren¬ 
cester was a town, though not, compared with Bristol, 
a large one; but without curbing her anticipations. 
It was country: there would be lanes and woods and 
fields and birds within walkable distance. She even 
achieved a very little colour in her cheeks in the last 
week, and helped to pack “ Father’s pictures ” and 
her own brushes and colours in a state of joyful 
ecstasy; dashed at intervals by grief for the puppy; 
but still a more normal, child-like mood than anything 
she had shown for some time. 

One query of Patricia Ellen’s was answered satis¬ 
factorily in the second letter. 


i68 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


“ With regard to your enquiry as to schools,” John 
Gideon had written; 

“ the Grammar School, I think, would meet your re¬ 
quirements. The Art Mistress is considered to be far 
beyond the average of the usual provincial school 
_ )> 

and went on to give further satisfactory details. 

Altogether, the move promised well. She did not 
know wether “ Gideon Brothers, per pro J.G.,” was 
young or old; but as he had spoken of being glad she 
could come so soon, as his brother was to be married 
the last Thursday in August, necessitating a certain 
amount of re-arrangement in business details; and he 
would be relieved to have the household matters settled 
before that date, she concluded that he was young. 
He would possibly be marrying also, in a year or two; 
still, that would be a breathing space; and maybe his 
wife wouldn’t want to housekeep for a business place 
when he did marry. She would not cross her bridge 
before she came to it. 

“ Gideon Brothers? Yes, ma’am. Any more lug¬ 
gage? Two tin boxes and two wooden ones. This’un 
got breakables? Right, mum. Tom, gimme a ’and 
the other side. That all, mum? Right. Ge-et on! ” 
Thus Jehu, on the box of an antique cab; and they 
crawled at the heels of a still more antique horse, from 
the Great Western station at Cirencester to the Market 
Place; not a great distance, though Jehu made the 
most of it. 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 169 

“ Gideon Brothers, per pro J.G.,” greeted Patricia 
Ellen with reserved courtesy; but had the smile of a 
genuine child lover for white-faced Phyllida at her side, 
thereby making her feel that she could, in her own 
parlance, get along with him. 

The business was on the Abbey Church side of the 
Market Place, and the room allotted to them was, to 
Phyllida’s unbounded delight, at the back and on the 
third floor; so that they could see the fields and 
grounds that had belonged to the Abbey in the days 
when Augustinian Fathers walked the streets of medi¬ 
aeval Cisseter, and tended the sick and poor. 

“ Perhaps you would be able to come down by tea- 
time,” said John Gideon as they went upstairs; “ and 
look around the house afterwards? You will see then 
the condition we are in. My mother died six months 
ago, and as I intended at that time to make other per¬ 
manent arrangements before the autumn, my brother 
and I decided to go on till then with the cook to man¬ 
age things, but it has not been satisfactory, and as my 
plans have been altered, we found we must have some 
change.” 

Patricia Ellen unpacked and descended to tea as 
requested, Phyllida clinging tightly to her arm. 
Gideon’s still adhered to the old-fashioned custom of 
eating with their employees, and the assistants, 
eighteen in number, had their meals in the dining¬ 
room, in two relays. Patricia Ellen sat through both 
teas; was introduced to Maurice Gideon, deciding that 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


170 

he slightly resembled James Fullerton in manner; and 
made inward comments on the management apparent 
in the tea. 

The kettle had not boiled, and the milk was on the 
turn, last night’s mixed with this morning’s she con¬ 
cluded mentally, and neither chilled: there were cake 
and jam on the table, neither home made; the table 
itself was badly laid, and the room — furnished in 
solid, good Victorian mahogany — wanted dusting. 

“ I’ll be having discussions with both the cook and 
the housemaid before we’re any of us much older,” 
said Patricia Ellen to herself determinedly. 

The “ girls,” who numbered among them the dress¬ 
makers and the shop forewoman, women approaching 
her own age, made tentative approaches to Phyllida; 
one offering to take her in the Park next afternoon; 
and they seemed all quiet and friendly. Patricia Ellen 
anticipated no trouble there, but in the kitchen depart¬ 
ment she foresaw war. 

The rest of the establishment corresponded with the 
dining-room; waste, extravagance and dirt. The 
“ domestic offices ” were in the basement, and there 
Patricia Ellen found a state of affairs that filled her 
housewifely soul with horror. Sauce-pans and tins 
caked with grease; food jumbled up higgledy-piggledy 
in a grimy larder; a piece of cold beef, weighing at 
least four pounds, stuck up on a top shelf, and left 
till it was crawling. The cook, a portly person with 
an expensive nose, accompanied the excursion; hand- 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 171 

ing over the keys with a thinly veiled hostility, and 
prophesying to the housemaid when the tour was fin¬ 
ished that she could see well enough that that wasn’t 
the sort of lady she was accustomed to work for, and 
the house wouldn’t hold them both very long. The fact 
that Patricia Ellen had come to a similar conclusion 
escaped her notice. 

Being Saturday night, it was nearly nine o’clock 
before John Gideon emerged from his office, and called 
his new housekeeper in for a business talk. 

“ You’d better give the jaw, old man,” Maurice had 
said. “ You’ve engaged her, and you’ve got to live 
in the house with her;” and departed on his motor 
bicycle for Cheltenham and his lady-love. 

For the first time Patricia Ellen had a good look 
at her employer, and somehow received the impres¬ 
sion that this healthy-faced, large young man had been 
hurt, and was, under his businesslike exterior, rag- 
ingly bitter and angry. He was crisp and clear and 
dry enough in the interview, however. His manner 
might have been Fullerton’s own, with the suavity left 
out, until he rose and shut his desk preparatory to say¬ 
ing good-night, when he enquired about Phyllida and 
stood for five minutes talking of the child with a kind¬ 
liness that made Patricia Ellen inwardly determined 
that she would have that house running like an auto¬ 
matic machine before the week was out. 

She went upstairs to find Phyllida peaceful and 
quiet; sleeping as she had not slept for months. The 


172 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


stars were showing on the sweep of sky; the scent of 
dew-freshened grass — the most restful smell there is 
— came through the open window. The life of Sat¬ 
urday night was agog and busy still in the Market 
Place, but the sound barely travelled to that back 
room, and the quiet was undisturbed. 


CHAPTER V 


S HE kept her word to herself, and in a week she 
had that house running smoothly, and “ on the 
way to be clean.” Cook had slammed herself 
out in high dudgeon on the third day, accompanied by 
good advice; and Patricia Ellen scoured and cleaned 
and polished from morning till night, when she was 
not cooking. It was a week of strenuous work, but she 
frankly enjoyed it. She was a Martha woman to the 
bones of her; and to such a woman no panorama, how¬ 
ever beautiful, can ever equal the deep down sheen 
that rubbing brings on old mahogany; no garden of 
sweet herbs (unless they have planted it themselves) 
will ever give quite the satisfaction that is brought 
by whiffs of soap-suds and polish. 

Phyllida was overjoyed with everything. Miss 
Martinell, the millinery saleswoman, who had taken 
her into the Park, was a lover of wild life, and with 
her the child entered into the kingdom of the Lesser 
Folk, and found herself at home there. 

Cirencester Park is not, as its name suggests, a 
stretch of grass with lobelia and scarlet geraniums 
round it, and chairs and a bandstand in the middle. 
The beautiful surroundings of Earl Bathurst’s home 


173 


i 74 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


have many stretches of lawn; but at present neither 
Municipality nor State has been able to lay hands on 
it; and it remains, though free of access to all, the 
private property of men who love it, so that it is suf¬ 
fered to remain in its massed loveliness of ten thousand 
shades of green, undesecrated. 

Phyllida came into tea that first Sunday afternoon 
bubbling over with excitement. She had seen real 
squirrels and little blue tits and a woodpecker; oh, 
and the streets have such lovely names — Cecily Hill 
and Watermoor, and oh, there were such lots and lots 
of wild flowers, and such lovely trees; and it’s all so 
beautiful and green; and Miss Martinell says there’s 
a place called the Wood House where you can get tea 
and have picnics, and oh, this is a beautiful place! 

She subsided with a little gurgle of delight. Every¬ 
thing in turn was joy; the quaint houses, the old 
Church — she hoped on the second Sunday that they 
would stay there always; there were such heaps of 
things to draw. 

It was towards the end of the second week when 
John Gideon went away to Cheltenham to his brother’s 
wedding that Patricia Ellen learnt what were those 
other plans of which he had spoken on the night of her 
arrival. 

“He must be feeling a bit sore,” commented the 
head saleswoman. She was a lady whose conversation 
dealt largely with human nature in the concrete. Pa- 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 175 

tricia Ellen, having nothing better to do for the mo¬ 
ment, listened and looked a question. 

“ You didn’t know? ” Triumphant pleasure dwelt 
in the voice. “ Oh, I must tell you. He was going to 
be married, you know; he was engaged before old 
Mrs. Gideon died; and then it was fixed that they 
should live here, and she should carry on the house¬ 
keeping. I said at the time it would never answer, 
a bit of a girl like that. She was twenty-three or four, 
but looked seventeen and acted like it.” 

Miss Tomlinson paused and hugged herself com¬ 
placently. 

“ A girl of the place? ” enquired Patricia Ellen. 

“Oh, yes; her father’s a dentist up at Watermoor, 
people of quite good standing. Well, they were going to 
be married, it was only a few weeks before you came; 
all the presents arrived and everything, and then, two 
days before the wedding, the girl eloped with a young 
naval officer home on leave who was staying in the 
house next door. She posted a letter to Mr. Gideon 
from Portsmouth to tell him what she had done.” 

Patricia Ellen made a little sound of sympathy; but 
Miss Tomlinson was fairly launched; and it would 
have taken the voice of an auctioneer to stop her. 

“ It fairly broke him up, Mrs. Haddendon. I hap¬ 
pened to take the letters in that morning; I had been 
out for a walk before breakfast and I met the postman. 
I noticed there was one marked ‘ Portsmouth ’ on the 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


176 

top of the pile; and I saw him look puzzled when he 

took it up-” not for nothing had Miss Tomlinson 

been an active supporter of circulating libraries; her 
manner was that of the “ best seller ” to the last im¬ 
pressive point — “ and all of a sudden, as I was going 
out of the office, he gave a curious sort of a choke 
and a groan and sank back in his chair as if he had had 
a seizure. I rushed to his side, but he waved me off 
and just said; ‘ Tell Maurice I want him/ so I went 
and found Mr. Maurice — he was only just dressed — 
and I heard him go into the office and lock the door; 
and after more than an hour he came out, and said 
neither he nor his brother would be able to attend to 
any business that day; and in the evening he called 
me again, and told me that the wedding would not take 
place, because the lady had decided otherwise; and 
would I inform the others of the staff, and desire them 
to make no reference to the matter in Mr. Gideon’s 
hearing. So, of course, we none of us did; but oh, it 
has changed him. He used to be such a jolly sort of 
fellow, always for ready for a joke, and now it’s do 
this and do that, and mostly rather sharp about it.” 

So that was the story. Patricia Ellen pondered it 
as she went about her work, and decided finally that 
it was something of a relief to her. Se felt honestly 
sorry for John Gideon; did she not know what it felt 
like to have to shut up one’s feelings and attend to busi¬ 
ness while underneath one was mad with the desire to 
hurt one’s self, other people, it did not matter whom 



THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 177 

or what, if only one could smash and smash and smash. 
All the same, after that episode, he was not likely to 
want to be engaged again very quickly; she could 
safely count on three or four years, she thought. 

And she would feed him and look after him ex¬ 
tremely well. During the week that had elapsed, at 
any rate, he had not been too broken-hearted to ap¬ 
preciate good cooking. “ The way to a man’s heart 
is through his stomach,” she quoted to herself, and 
turned to preparations for a good supper when he 
should return from Cheltenham that night. 

When he arrived, he seemed determinedly talkative, 
to her surprise, for he had previously vouchsafed noth¬ 
ing but necessaries; chatted pleasantly of the wedding, 
even admitting her to half confidences about his affec¬ 
tion for his brother. 

“ It will be a bit of wrench you know, Mrs. Hadden- 
don, we have always been together, Maurice and I, 
and although one may say marriage shan’t make any 
difference, it’s bound to. The very fact of his being 
in a different house means a change and a separation, 
even if it’s only down at Watermoor. You’ve seen 
the house? ” 

“ No,” said Patricia Ellen, inwardly speculative. 

“It isn’t much of a place; just a little Cotswold 
stone cottage; but big enough for two people to start 
in, and it faces away from the road; looks over the 
fields across Chesterton Lane way, so it gets a lovely 
view. I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Haddendon, we might 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


178 

take a stroli up there next early closing day, if you’re 
agreeable, and go on to Chesterton to see the birds. 
Rajah Brooke lived at Chesterton House once, you 
know, and he brought home a whole collection of 
things from Sarawak; birds and beasts and curios; 
and now they’re put in a sort of garden museum place, 
so that people can go and see them. Your little maid 
would like the birds, I expect; I was awfully gone on 
them when I was a kid.” 

Patricia Ellen thanked him as she stacked up his 
supper things and departed, wondering why this 
thusness. The impression of rage and pain in him 
was with her more strongly than ever. It might be 
that he was getting over the first shock and wanting 
to mix with his fellows again; it might be, but still, she 
wondered. 

Other people wondered, too. In no place is so lively 
an interest taken in one’s neighbours as in a country 
town; and though Cirencester is larger than the aver¬ 
age market centre of an agricultural district, the 
Gideon brothers were prominent and well-known fig¬ 
ures, and John Gideon’s marriage fiasco had been 
discussed at every tea and supper table in the town. 
When Maurice returned from his month’s honeymoon 

— Mrs. Maurice, being a wine merchant’s daughter 
and accustomed to mix with “ professional people,” 
considered a fortnight’s honeymoon very middle class 

— he became aware through certain nods and becks 
and wreathed smiles, not to mention more direct 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 179 

methods of communication, that his brother was again 
providing matter for conversational enterprise. Mrs. 
Maurice, receiving first calls in her Sheraton (pattern) 
drawing-room, also received occult information to the 
same effect, and mentioned it with some asperity to 
her husband. Maurice laughed at her. 

“ I don’t think you need worry,” he said. “ John 
isn’t likely to make an ass of himself with his house¬ 
keeper, even if she had been young and pretty. I wish 
there was some chance of his consoling himself for that 
little beast, but there isn’t. He got it too badly, poor 
old chap.” 

“ Well, I don’t know; I think that’s just why he’s 
likely to. Men do such perfectly insane things when 
they’re upset.” 

“ Look here, Rose,” Maurice was doggedly un¬ 
alarmed; “you don’t seriously think that level-headed 
old John would go and tie himself up, in a fit of temper, 
with a woman of that age? He’d never be such a 
darned fool. Why, it would ruin him for life.” 

“Well I don’t know,” said Rose again; “in any 
case, I think you might speak to him about it. It’s 
not very nice for me, just come here, to have my broth¬ 
er-in-law’s name coupled with a common woman like 
that. Whether he means anything or not, he’s taking 
her and her child for walks and going to Church with 
them. It’s very silly of him, to say the least of it, 
for, of course, a woman of that sort would lose no 
chance.” 


180 PATRICIA ELLEN 

“ I don’t think she’s such a bad sort as all that.” 

“ Oh, my dear Maurice! ” Had she not met the 
individual in question a day or two previously, and 
been struck by her air of assertive possession? And 
when, wishing to show a kindly interest in the firm’s 
employees she had smiled with sweet patronage on 
Phyllida, and had said that she was getting quite a 
big girl and would soon be able to leave school and 
help her mother with the housework, the woman had 
been positively rude. 

She was pretty and piquante; though with a pretti¬ 
ness that in a few years’ time might be called shrewish 
by the ill-natured, and Maurice was newly married. 
He therefore obediently “ spoke ” to John next day, 
and was told curtly that if the old tabbies in the 
damned, gossiping little town liked to make a talk 
because he had time to give a bit of pleasure to a deli¬ 
cate child, they could — he didn’t care. 

“ Well, Rose says. . . .” 

John swallowed down a “ Damn Rose! ” with some 
difficulty. Best not say it. Maurice was all beer and 
skittles at present, and might not like it. He turned 
the remark into: “ What does Rose say? ” 

“ Well, of course,” Maurice felt a trifle awkward. 
The heart-to-heart talk was not taking the direction 
he (and Rose) had intended. “ I mean, she’s just 
come to the place, and naturally she wants to make 
nice friends; and though Mrs. Haddendon’s a very 
good sort, she isn’t — well, you couldn’t call her an 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 181 


educated woman, exactly; and if you treat her as an 
equal it’s a — oh — well — you know what I mean 
_» 

“ A bit difficult for Rose to keep her in her place/’ 
John finished for him. “ And now you’ve delivered 
your message and done as you’ve been bid, we can 
get on with the work. Hartman’s have written that 
they can’t do that serge before the first week in Decem¬ 
ber; they’re bunged up; can we wait, or shall we try 
Crossley’s? ” 

They plunged into business details, but the talk 
rankled, and drove John Gideon a step further on the 
path he had mapped out for himself. 

So Rose was beginning to give herself superior airs 
already, was she? It was only what he had expected of 
her. Who was she, he would like to know, to refuse 
to live over the business and help with it, as his and 
Maurice’s mother had done all the years of her mar¬ 
riage and widowhood? She — Rose — was going to 
keep up with the sort of folks he had met at that fool 
wedding; well, they weren’t his sort; ready to spend 
a man’s money and look down on the way he earned it. 
John Gideon bit his lips as he bent over his letters, rec¬ 
ollecting the mortification, the raging smart he had 
endured on that unhappy day. 

He had set out in the morning determined to do his 
best to help his brother’s happiness, to let no hint 
of the pent up torment within find vent. His life was 
all broken in two. He had loved the dentist’s daughter 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


182 

up at Watermoor very sincerely. He was a healthy 
young animal, and his love had not in it much of imag¬ 
ination or poetic fervour; it had never spoiled his 
appetite or kept him awake at night; but all that he 
had to give he gave her, including the one shy passion 
that his shop-keeping, cricketing, footballing life held 
— pride of name and race. 

For nearly five centuries Gideons had lived in Cots- 
wold villages; never great or famous; doing nothing 
spectacular; plain-living, honest, God-fearing folk, 
rearing sheep and growing corn, proud of the work 
of their hands, and of the land that had borne them; 
gravely accepting whatever responsibilities Providence 
had put upon them. Many a stone record was to be 
found of them and of their kin in the churchyards 
round about. Churchwardens, J.P’s, waywarders — 
many and various were the offices they had filled; and 
always mention was made of their probity and upright¬ 
ness of dealing. 

The shop in Cirencester had been opened in the 
second decade of the 19th century by a younger son 
of the Rencombe Gideons, also a John, who had served 
in the Napoleonic wars, and returned with a perma¬ 
nent limp and a rheumatic ache in his bones, that 
made him prefer an indoor life. He had been wise 
enough to see that for a generation to come, more 
money was to be made in trade than in farming by 
a man who could not do the practical work of the lat- 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 183 

ter, and, overcoming the prejudice against “ shop 
people ” which even to this day lingers in the breast 
of some agriculturists, acquired this draper’s business 
— selling therein, by the way, materials spun and 
woven from wool bred by his Cotswold relatives — and 
prospered greatly. 

He maintained the family tradition for scrupulous 
honesty in dealing and passed on that reputation, to¬ 
gether with the business, to his son. 

The present John Gideon was the fourth of the line 
to succeed to both sections of that heritage; it would 
not be held of great account by a Whitely or a Bur¬ 
bage; but to him it was a great thing, and sturdily he 
set before him the determination to hand over both rep- 
putation and business intact to his son when it should 
please Providence to send him one. His engagement 
had strengthened that determination; more than ever 
was it necessary that Gideon’s costumes and rain coats, 
their blankets and sheetings — substantial stuff bought 
with an eye to the nip of the Cotswolds — should be 
flawless in texture and durability, since there would so 
soon be another John Gideon to carry on. When he 
received his ex-fiancee’s letter informing him baldly of 
the truth of a much quoted proverb anent men and 
small quadrupeds, he had tried his best to take the 
blow manfully. He could not be his companionable 
self for a time, that was beyond him, with the dream 
of a little John Gideon so roughly brought to waking; 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


184 

but he could and would be decent, he phrased it to 
himself, and there was Maurice to think of and, pos¬ 
sibly, Maurice’s son. 

In that frame of mind he had gone to the wedding. 
He had not enjoyed himself greatly; weddings are not 
men’s functions, and moreover, for a girl who was 
marrying a plain tradesman, and going to live in a 
seven-roomed Cotswold cottage, the elaborate frills of 
the ceremony and the ensuing reception, the train of 
bridesmaids, the dresses, the attendant photographers 
and reporters, struck him as ridiculous; in his own 
words, it was just a gape-sight, and nothing more, and 
that wasn’t his notion of a wedding. He had, however, 
acquitted himself creditably of his best man’s duties, 
without reference to his own ideas of the fitness of 
things, until later in the afternoon, when, bride and 
bridegroom having vanished to change into travelling 
garments, he retired behind some big laurels in the 
garden with the intention of smoking a surreptitious 
pipe (he did not care for cigarettes) and had over¬ 
heard a fragment of conversation from an unseen seat 
on the other side of the bushes. 

“ Quite a pretty wedding,” said a voice. 

“ Oh, quite,” replied another. “ I suppose Rose 
made up her mind that, all things considered, it was 
better to have a fairly good splash; it neutralized the 
Cirencester contingent rather better.” 

John, glowering, match in the act of being struck, 
considered whether he ought to show himself. 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 185 

“ Still, I think she has done wisely. She has three 
sisters to consider; the man’s evidently comfortably 
off, and fond of her, and he really isn’t so bad; more 
cultured than one might expect. The brother, of 
course, has ‘ commercial ’ written all over him; but 
Rose can choose her friends, and living right away as 
she will, she need not have anything to do with the 
shop.” 

John decided that he would stay where he was. 

“ Wasn’t the brother engaged, and the girl threw 
him over? ” 

“ Yes, just before the wedding. Of course, it wasn’t 
quite the thing to do, but Rose said she really didn’t 
altogether wonder; she was quite a nice sort of girl, 
and he actually expected her to live at the business 
with him and look after the assistants, and that sort 
of thing. One really can’t deal with that species of 
mentality. I believe he even hinted that Rose might 
fill the vacant position-” 

“ My dear! Not really? ” 

“ I gathered so from Rose. He thought things could 
then go on as they had in his mother’s lifetime; quite 
an impossible old woman she was, Rose said; not an 
idea in her head beyond meals and the business. Rose 
told me she could hardly be even annoyed at the sug¬ 
gestion, it was so funny. I think he has some sort 
of housekeeper there now, a middle-aged, kitcheny 
kind of person.” 

“ Well,” with a tinkling laugh, “ if he’s so anxious 



i86 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


to have a Mrs. Gideon doing the housekeeping and 
cooking, and making out the bills, he’d better marry 
the housekeeper. Don’t you think we’d better be 
moving, dear? Rose will be down soon, and we must 
see the last of her.” 

“ Dear ” assented, and they strolled away, leaving 
John standing in dumb fury, his hand with the pipe 
still half way to his mouth. So that was how the women 
talked — Rose and her educated, superior friends — 
about what to him was a sorrow too great to speak 
of; laugh at it and him and Gideon’s and — curse 
them — at his mother. How dared they! He felt 
physically sick with anger, and if he could have got 
his big hands on Rose at that minute, Rose with her 
smirking, pretty-pretty politeness to his face, and her 
cheap, snobby cattishness behind his back, it would 
have been bad for her bridal finery. That she, a little, 
empty-headed fool, should criticize his mother! Lov¬ 
ingly he recalled the dignified figure; a woman who 
looked well to the ways of her household, and whose 
children truly rose up to call her blessed; and that 
little — little — bitch had poked fun at her and the 
work she had done. So her friends thought he had 
better marry Mrs. Haddendon. He stopped dead in 
his prowl behind the laurel bushes, an ugly grin on his 
face. Well, why shouldn’t he? He had had enough 
of girls of the ordinary kind, the socially educated, 
dancing, tennis playing kind, with their pretty faces, 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 187 

and their pretty frocks, and neither truth nor pity in 
them. He would show them that one man, at any 
rate, could do without them; could find a wife in the 
homely kind of woman they despised. If Mrs. Had- 
dendon, first-rate cook, thoroughly capable and busi¬ 
nesslike — if she would marry him, married they two 
should be. 

He pursued his resolution doggedly; made himself 
as agreeable as possible through the time of Maurice’s 
honeymoon; concerned himself over Phyllida’s artistic 
efforts — though this last was genuine, the child’s 
work was little short of marvellous, and he was becom¬ 
ing honestly fond of her. Dimly he knew what he 
was doing was conceived in the spirit of a spoilt and 
peevish child; that he was setting out to solace himself 
for a real hurt and disappointment by inflicting on 
himself a far greater one; he was throwing away his 
dreams by shutting the door on little John Gideon, 
and throwing away the best of himself with them. He 
might not have persisted if it had not been for 
Maurice’s “ gospel according to Rose.” After that, 
he would have married Patricia Ellen if she had been 
a squint-eyed imbecile of seventy. Since Rose dis¬ 
liked the idea and did not consider Mrs. Haddendon, 
the housekeeper, a worthy object for her friendship, 
she became for that reason a woman to be desired 
above all others, without peer among her sex. He 
redoubled his attentions, until even Miss Tomlinson, 


i88 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


a devoted adherent of Patricia Ellen, admitted that 
things were going a bit far, and there didn’t seem much 
doubt where he was tending. 

Patricia Ellen was bound to acknowledge to herself 
that it looked like it. She went on her way, with an 
outward assumption of bland unconsciousness, but 
inwardly she was shrewdly alive to the comment and 
speculation she was causing. She knew perfectly well 
that it was not by accident that whenever John Gideon 
escorted her and Phyllida for a walk, or to the “ Pic¬ 
tures,” they always encountered one or more of his 
employees. When she walked into the Gideon pew at 
the Abbey with him on Sunday mornings she was as 
well aware of the Peeping Tom glances which raked 
her back from the pews of Mr. Davidson, the grocer, 
and Mr. Bennett, the ironmonger, as if she had herself 
been kneeling in them, pious hands over her face, and 
fingers carefully separated across her eyes. But the 
small whirlwind of comment, amused or hostile, which 
followed her did not in the least help her to make 
up her mind what she should say, supposing the time 
should arrive when she should have to say something. 

By a coincidence she received at that time a letter, 
forwarded from Bristol, from Elsie Mitchell. It told 
her briefly that the writer was going to be married 
to the son of the proprietor of the shop whither Patri¬ 
cia Ellen’s reference had taken her. It thanked Mrs. 
Haddendon for her help, and then went on to say: 
“ Good folks would be horrified, but I told you I meant 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 189 

to take the quickest way out; I am taking it, and I 
shall make him quite a good wife. You must grab 
what you can in this world. Burn this and don’t 
answer it. I’d send your little girl my love, but I 
don’t suppose you would give her the message.” Pa¬ 
tricia Ellen did not, but Elsie’s bitter philosophy hung 
about in her mind. 

Phyllida, entered at the Grammar School in Sep¬ 
tember, was healthy and blooming as she had not been 
for many a long day. Cirencester suited her admi¬ 
rably; she liked the petting she received from Gideon’s 
assistants; and, best of all, Miss McKane, the art 
mistress, proved to be, as John Gideon had said, far 
above the average for a provincial school; a woman 
who might have made name and fame; but poor health 
forbade over strain of any kind, and love of the Cots- 
wold country kept her in Cirencester. Phyllida sat 
in the school drawing-class obediently; did freehand 
and model and geometrical patterns and wall-paper de¬ 
signs after the most approved South Kensington sched¬ 
ule ; but out of school hours Miss McKane encouraged 
her to go sketching, and always the child devoted her¬ 
self to small intimate studies of bird and animal life. 
She had inherited her father’s gift for purity of outline, 
but not his feeling for space and breadth. Her genius 
bid fair, child as she was, to be no unworthy descend¬ 
ant of his, but it promised to be small, brilliant, in¬ 
tense; lacking the largeness and freedom of his work. 
Miss McKane inspected, criticized, corrected, encour- 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


190 

aged, and Phyllida was of opinion that her instructress 
knew everything about drawing and painting. 

Patricia Ellen considered the matter carefully. The 
art lessons were certainly an argument for staying in 
Cirencester; but still she hesitated, and she had come 
to no decision when, at the beginning of November, 
John Gideon said abruptly at the end of a going 
through accounts: 

“ We seem to get on pretty well, I think, Mrs. Had- 
dendon? ” 

Her heart began to jump; was it coming? 

“ And I have been wondering whether we couldn’t 
turn the arrangement into a permanent one. I 
mean . . beginning to flounder; he was not used to 
doing things he was secretly ashamed of; poor honest 
John Gideon with his rubicund face. “ I mean, I 
should be very pleased if you would marry me. Per¬ 
haps -” gathering fluency now the plunge was 

over, “ you will think it rather strange my asking you 
like this. You know I was engaged not so long ago? ” 

Patricia Ellen murmured something vague. 

“ Well, of course, I was awfully cut up at the time, 
but I don’t know whether it wasn’t better not to 
come to anything. I’ve got that sort of thing all over 

and done with now-” he thought the slight sneer 

was indicative of a lordly contempt, poor fool — 
“and I can settle down comfortably; and if you 
would settle down with me, Mrs. Haddendon, I think 
it would be a most excellent arrangement.” 




THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 191 

Patricia Ellen sat silent. Her thoughts went back 
to that first wooing — the only one; nobody could 
possibly call this a wooing — by the fowl run at the 
Red Lion; the eager love that had almost choked the 
voice that pleaded with her. A moment she shut her 
eyes, and let herself dream back; but the Downs were 
not the Cotswolds; the “ then ” was far removed from 
the “ now/’ and she became aware that John Gideon 
was speaking again. 

“ I’m not going to yarn about love and all that; 
you’ve been married already, and I haven’t got much 
use for that sort of thing, it would sound rather silly 
between us; but we have a good deal in common, we 
are interested in the same sort of things, I think. Both 
of us like a business life; you would have a permanent 
home here, and I would do all I possibly could to help 
your little girl — I’d be very glad to do all I could 
for her, she is a dear little maid.” 

Patricia Ellen rose from her chair; it was eight 
o’clock and time to be seeing about supper. 

“ May I take until to-morrow night to think it over, 
Mr. Gideon? ” she asked. “ It takes a good deal of 
thinking about, and I’d rather not decide offhand.” 

It occurred to her afterwards that it would have 
been more gracious to thank him for his offer. He 
had looked slightly surprised when she had left the 
office with no further words; but she did not see any 
particular cause for being grateful. She had received 
a proposal of marriage certainly; supposedly a feather 


192 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


in the cap of every woman, but it was not one of which 
she or the proposer had much cause to feel proud. 

Her first instinct was to reject the offer. In thought 
and heart she was Timothy’s wife far more than his 
widow; consciously or unconsciously, all of her which 
was not directed by Phyllida’s needs was guided by 
what Timothy would like or would not like, and 
Phyllida was so exactly Timothy over again that it 
seemed often as if her husband was speaking to her 
through the child. She was, emotionally, too inarticu¬ 
late to put the thought into words, but she felt that 
that idyll on the hills had been so pure and perfect a 
thing that the union it enshrined could never be 
broken': it was the more imperishable for that it had 
lasted so short a time. Had they two lived on together 
they would not have loved each other less, but other 
matters — his growing fame and reputation, the needs 
of her family — would have been bound to take up 
more of their attention; the outside world must have 
begun to intrude. As it was, right to the end they two 
had lived in and for each other; even that end, alone 
amid the storms of that wild country, though its hor¬ 
ror still gripped her, seemed not unfitting. She was 
Timothy’s wife now, and would be till she joined him 
again. Feeling so, the thought of union with another 
man disgusted her with a sick disgust. Granted that 
the proposed marriage held nothing in it of affection 
or even of passion, she would none the less have to 
share bed and board with John Gideon; lie by his side 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 193 

through the night watches; be in physical oneness with 
him; nurse him if he was ill; live his life; die his death 
— no, she couldn’t. 

Mundanely the proposal would have suited her well 
enough. She liked Cirencester, she liked Gideon’s, 
and were she in a position of control, she could see 
a dozen ways in which the business could be enlarged 
and developed; ways which would never occur to the 
conservatism of its owners, but which she would enjoy 
working out. That side of it attracted her; but spirit¬ 
ually it was bigamy. Considering herself alone, she 
would have said no promptly and fared forth into the 
world again, without a backward look. But, there was 
Phyllida. Acceptance of the offer would mean, for 
Phyllida, ease and comfort, a home, a good education, 
means to follow up her gift without the hardship that 
her physical frailty would never endure. Could she, 
for Phyllida’s sake, commit this sin — for sin it was, 
she was quite clear about that — take its consequences 
on her own shoulders, and carry them unflinchingly to 
the bitter end? 

She sat down in her bedroom in the dark, elbows on 
her knees, chin on her hand, and fought the issue out 
in her mind. It was a cold night, with more than a 
touch of frost in the chill November air, but she felt 
nothing of it, she was beyond the reach of any mere 
bodily discomfort. She was forty-six years of age, and 
older than her years in everything except her superb 
physique. Many women have barely parted with their 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


194 

girlhood, let alone their youth, at forty-six, but she 
had buried hers eleven years ago when John Gideon 
had, in all probability, not left his schooldays as many 
months behind him. She had not at the moment much 
sentiment to spare for John Gideon beyond a faint 
scorn for his folly, and contempt for the disappointed 
love that could express itself in such folly; but, never¬ 
theless, she was robbing him of his youth, and that 
thwarted youth would resurrect itself sooner or later 
with power to hurt. 

The Patricia Ellen Cooksey whom Timothy had met 
and loved in Avebury might have thought that once 
people were married they would do their best to fit 
in with each other’s ways, even if the marriage didn’t 
seem a very sensible one. The Ellen Haddendon who 
had been for over ten years manageress of Fullerton’s 
Restaurant had no such illusions. It was not in the 
least probable that John Gideon, once he had wakened 
up to what he had done, would have much considera¬ 
tion for the woman who had taken advantage of his 
temporary lunacy. For the sake of his business, and 
perhaps, of his brother, he might keep from open 
scandal, but assuredly he would not trouble to do 
much more. Supposing she said no; she could get 
another situation easily enough, she had no mock 
modesty about her capabilities. Phyllida would prob¬ 
ably be able to win a scholarship when she was a 
few years older, and would become an art mistress in 
a secondary school if she was strong enough; they 


THE WORLD AS MAN HAS MADE IT 195 

paid the best, and she would devote her talents and 
her youth to teaching the rules of perspective, and the 
laws of colour to children who cared no more for either 
than they did for decimal fractions. 

She lighted a candle and walked over to the bed to 
look at the sleeping child. On the chest of drawers lay 
a u XXth Century ” of Miss McKane’s, opened at 
an article by Herbert Loder on “ The Fashion for 
Garden Pictures,” and on the top of it a sketch of 
Phyllida’s own of two sparrows bathing in a puddle 
in a miry road, with a bit of October hedgerow in the 
background; a vivid, alive thing, with a hundred and 
one faults of technique, certainly, but clear and certain 
of colour, and with an atmosphere far removed from 
the usual work of the school girl who was “ good at 
drawing.” The candle wavered for a moment in the 
draught from the window. Patricia Ellen turned with 
it in her hand, and the light flickered across Phyllida’s 
eyelids. The child stirred and the right hand, out¬ 
stretched, made a little, sweeping, downward move¬ 
ment, with the fingers curved as if she held a brush. 

Her mother put out the candle and sat down again; 
she knew now she was going to say yes to-morrow to 
John Gideon’s proposal, and she felt heavy and tired 
and old; but she had much to settle and sort out in 
her mind before she went to bed. She was going to 
make a bargain with herself, for one thing. She would 
take from John Gideon his youth, his romance, his 
son, and give them to Phyllida; she would take from 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


196 

herself her generosity, her uprightness, her faithful¬ 
ness, and give them to Phyllida; and in return she 
would work for John Gideon as never woman worked 
for man yet. He should be lapped in comfort; his 
business should rise to heights undreamed of in a 
country town; she would hold him to no tie save a 
business one; in all other respects she would leave him 
free. Whatever rumours she might hear, whatever 
facts she might notice, whatever treatment she might 
receive, there would be from her no comments and no 
reproaches. She would be his capable and loyal house¬ 
keeper. 

Perhaps at long last, when Phyllida should be an 
artist in actual fact, commanding big prices and re¬ 
spectful criticisms, safe from further storms of ad¬ 
versity, her mother might lay her burden down, and go 
back to Avebury and Timothy. 

Till then she would be Ellen Gideon, deaf and blind 
to all save her work. 

And with that resolve she confronted John Gideon 
in the office next morning, before Maurice came to 
business. 

“ I am afraid I was rather abrupt last night, Mr. 
Gideon. I was a little upset and surprised, but I have 
thought it over, and if you are quite sure you want to 
marry a woman so much older than yourself, and one 
who has been married before, I shall be very pleased 
to be your wife.” 







PART III 

MAY-DEW 





























CHAPTER I 


M RS. JOHN GIDEON, “Cirencester’s es¬ 
teemed Mayoress,” with her husband, “ our 
worthy Mayor,” stood awaiting the arrival 
of Phyllida’s train. Incidentally, the locomotive prob¬ 
ably carried some few hundred other souls as well, 
since it was the week before Christmas; but for Mrs. 
John Gideon it was Phyllida’s train, and Phyllida, 
nearing her one and twentieth birthday, was coming 
home for her last Christmas vacation with only two 
more terms to study, before arriving at the dignity of 
a Studio and an Artistic Career of her own. 

Five minutes later she was on the platform with 
them; a small, slight being, with brilliant eyes; a 
twist of the upper lip that made her look always as 
if she had some private joke, and a nature of such 
dancing happiness that she could have found enjoy¬ 
ment in a Cameronian sermon. Such was Phyllida, 
and Patricia Ellen’s heart swelled within her. “ Oh,” 
she said to herself with a little gasp, as she listened 
to the gay chatter: “ it was worth while; it was worth 
while.” 

The price she had paid had not been a light one. 
Every atom of endurance she possessed had been 


199 


200 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


tried in those nine and a half years. John had awak¬ 
ened as she had foreseen, and at first she had had much 
to suffer. He had not, as she expected, consoled himself 
with other women, partly because he was, in his own 
words, “sick of the whole boiling;” partly because 
he was at bottom a clean and decent individual, to 
whom illicit dalliance offered no more attraction than 
any other form of law breaking; but he learnt the 
potent comfort of whiskey, and the meaner one of 
venting hurt pride and disappointment on a woman. 
Ill temper, fault finding and sneers from him Patricia 
Ellen endured both publicly and privately; smiles 
and innuendoes from other people; and true to her 
promise to herself on that night when she made her 
decision, she remained cheerful and impervious to all; 
attentive to his needs, diligent in his business — 
though, inwardly, she often seethed with fury and 
shame. Two things only had saved them from ship¬ 
wreck: her great business ability, and Phyllida. 

John Gideon conceived a strong affection for Phyl¬ 
lida. He was, as has been said, a genuine child lover 
and there grew up between him and his step daughter 
the feeling that sometimes exists between a grown-up 
brother and a sister many years his junior; protecting 
and enveloping on his side, adoring on hers. Not by 
any means blindly adoring, however. Even in her 
very earliest ’teens she was a critical and observant 
young person, and it was her face of astonished dis¬ 
approval following some carping remark of his to her 


MAY-DEW 


201 


mother that brought him up with a round turn to the 
realization that if he would keep his place with the 
child, he must play the game with the mother; must be, 
in all respects, including whiskey, a sober, worthy 
citizen. He writhed under the knowledge, but the 
fact remained. He had been duped, bested; he might 
hug his grievance to him, do his best to punish its 
author, expend his manhood in any way that seemed 
to offer an outlet to anger and disillusionment, but if 
he did so, he would no more be Daddy John for Phyl- 
lida. He had lost much, he could not lose that too. 

Moreover, as time developed her schemes, he was 
unable to withhold a certain grudging respect for his 
wife. Viewed dispassionately, he supposed an out¬ 
sider would call her a rather remarkable woman. 
She was not his woman, but he could not but admit 
that Gideon Brothers was a very different proposition 
from what it had been; that the change was entirely 
due to her, and that from a business point of view he 
enjoyed working with her, and admired the unerring 
instinct which directed her management. The solid, 
reliable serges and raincoats were still there, their 
quality unimpaired; in that respect, at all events, 
Patricia shared the views of the Gideons, nothing 
flawed or shoddy would be tolerated under her regime; 
but to them were added stuffs from the looms of France 
and Italy, model gowns from Paris and Vienna; 
wonderful silks and embroideries from the Far East. 

Patricia Ellen knew the attitude taken by the neigh- 


202 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


bourhood. “ Oh yes, Gideon’s are really good for 
every-day, hard wearing sort of things; most reliable. 
Of course, for anything special I go to Bath or Chel¬ 
tenham if I can’t get up to town.” 

Mrs. John Gideon made a bold bid for the custom 
that went to Bath or Cheltenham or up to Town, and 
captured it. Madame who had come for the hunting 
season; or Madame who was getting herself or her 
daughter married; or Madame who was going to a great 
ball, could and did satisfy her every want at Gideon’s. 
First one shop was added, then another. The as¬ 
sistants had the house part of the last added premises 
to themselves now, with their own housekeeper. The 
old-fashioned shook their heads, and thought it was 
a pity John Gideon was not content with the good 
substantial turn-over his father had left him, without 
taking on all these new ways. Mrs. Maurice laughed 
and wondered in her tinkling voice whether that 
woman thought people were going to make her a model 
for their clothes. Contrary to expectation, every ven¬ 
ture prospered. 

Patricia Ellen was becoming increasingly in request, 
even before the Councillorship and the Mayoralty 
forced Public Life upon both of them, for such matters 
of social welfare as demanded a clear head and a wise 
benevolence. Child Welfare Committees, Care of 
Friendless Girls, and kindred associations, claimed 
proportions of her time and thought, and though she 
was not popular with some members, having little time 


MAY-DEW 


203 

and less patience for those who made of good works 
a social ladder, or a vent for inquisitive curiosity, she 
was greatly valued by those who worked for such 
causes in their every-day clothes. That, and Gideon’s 
provided a counter irritant for a sore heart. In some 
ways the existence she had mapped out for herself had 
proved less hard than she expected. There was more 
of companionship between her and her husband than 
she had looked for; she had formed friendships in the 
town that she valued, and the business was an absorb¬ 
ing interest; but — she had not reckoned on having 
to share Phyllida. She discovered the one jealousy of 
her life. That Phyllida should consider her step-father 
a decided acquisition; should invent a pet nickname 
of her own for him — she had curtly refused to let the 
child call him “ father,” that, at all events, should re¬ 
main undesecrated — that they should have a thou¬ 
sand and one jokes between themselves, and so com- 
radey an affection — these things were gall and 
wormwood to her. He was so lavishly generous to the 
child that she smothered the feeling as best she could; 
told herself she ought to be glad they were fond of 
each other; reminded herself what would have been 
Phyllida’s probable position without him; but the 
feeling remained, a sore hurt spot; and the increas¬ 
ingly busy and varied life she was bound to lead did 
in some degree assuage it. 

Mr. and Mrs. John Gideon still lived in the dwelling 
house of the original Gideon shop, enlarged and 


204 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


altered, it is true, but still, part of the business; much 
to the disgust of Mrs. Maurice. 

“ Of course,” she remarked to her husband, “ having 
married that woman one couldn’t expect him to rise at 
all, but he might take a private house, and try to keep 
up a little position; it’s most annoying.” 

She had had to recognise Mrs. John. It was a bitter 
degradation. As she had told all her particular friends, 
she knew that in marrying a man of a commercial 
occupation, she would occasionally have to know 
people whom she would have preferred not to know; 
but that she would have had to accept an inn-keeper’s 

daughter as a sister-in-law-! She had vowed she 

would never speak to the creature; but as Maurice 
had said (she might have added that Maurice had 
said so very emphatically) she and John were married, 
and John was the senior partner: one couldn’t very 
well not be on speaking terms, although on her part 
it would go no further. It became clear also that that 
woman desired — had the impertinence to desire — 
no intimacy. Once a year each invited the other 
formally to tea; once a year Mr. and Mrs. Maurice 
Gideon took supper in the mahogany dining-room be¬ 
hind the shop; and Mr. and Mrs. John ate dinner 
— “ Seven o’clock, please; it’s rather early, but Rose 
doesn’t like to keep the maid up late ” — off the Jaco¬ 
bean (style) oak at Sandringham Cottage; but there 
the acquaintance ended. 

Sandringham Cottage, however, in $pite of bow 



MAY-DEW 


205 

windows thrown out and another bedroom added, had 
long ceased to satisfy Mrs. Maurice. Two little girls 
had been born to her and Maurice, and it was not 
good for Vivienne and Alethea to be so cooped up; 
they ought to have a larger garden. This winter, 
therefore, land had been acquired, and a new house, 
with garage and tennis lawns, was to be built. She 
would have liked one of the houses on Cecily Hill, but 
that would have so separated her from dear Water- 
moor Church, and this position, out towards Chester¬ 
ton, was really very nice, and quiet out of the town. 

John Gideon remarked, apropos of nothing, that 
Cirencester Market Place had been good enough for 
his father and mother, and it was good enough for him; 
and Mrs. John Gideon added, also apropos of nothing, 
that for her part she couldn’t see why wine merchants 
should be so much better than grocers who had a wine 
and spirit licence; but they seemed to be. 

Supper on this night of Phyllida’s return was a very 
gay meal. Patricia Ellen thought of Timothy’s little 
song, the words rang in her ears — “ And goes to 
gather May-dew, before the world comes down.” She 
wondered would the child be always like this, always 
finding food for laughter in such little ordinary things; 
seeing brightness and a best side in everything. It was 
not a selfish or heedless happiness; she reminded Pa¬ 
tricia Ellen very often of the little mother sparrows she 
was so fond of painting; confiding, friendly, loving 


206 PATRICIA ELLEN 

and innocently gay; very easily pleased, very easily 
hurt. 

On this occasion, apart from the many interests of 
her student life, she had real news for her mother. 

“ Last week it was, Mummie; I didn’t tell you in 
my letter, it was such a lot to write, and I was coming 
home so soon; but I had gone to South Kensington; 
Mr. Salingthay wanted me to study the humming 
birds; he isn’t quite satisfied with my feathers, and 
I was dabbing away at them, when a man came in, 
quite oldish, and a girl younger than me. I didn’t 
take any notice of them, and all of a sudden he pulled 
up short in front of me, and said: ‘ Young lady, would 
you mind telling me your name? ’ and when I told 
him he said: ‘ Timothy’s baby! ’ and I thought he was 
going to cry; and just fancy, he was Herbert Loder, 
the art critic-” 

Patricia Ellen suppressed an exclamation — 

“ — I didn’t know he’d been really a friend of 
Father’s.” 

“Oh yes,” said her mother; “he used to stay with 
us.” 

“ Loder? ” from her husband. “ Why, I’ve seen 
his name in the Daily Telegraph.” 

“Now you both be quiet; this is my do, and it’s 
ever so exciting. He talked to me for quite a long 
time; and took me and the girl — she was his niece — 
to have a puffickly scrumptious lunch; and he wanted 
to know where I was living, and where I was working, 



MAY-DEW 


207 

and he came all the way down to Richmond the next 
day to see me at the school; and he wanted to know 
all about you and what we’d done — oh, and particu¬ 
larly if you still had that picture of Father’s, that one 
looking across Pewsey Vale, you know — so I said 
you had, and he said he would like to come and see 
it again if he might; and when I go back after Christ¬ 
mas would I go and stay with him and his wife? They 
live at Bedford Park, so I said I would: and now I’ll 
stop and breathe and you can talk — no, you can’t, 
though. He looked at my work and was just scrump¬ 
tious about it, said I wanted more experience, but he 
picked out some things; the one I did of the squirrels 
in Regent’s Park, and two or three from here last 
summer. That one of Mrs. Maurice’s friend’s Pekin¬ 
ese, that she was so angry about; you know — the 
one I called ‘ Mother’s Darling ’; and one or two bird 
and dog things; and he said if I’d do some more on 
those lines by midsummer, he’d see about an exhibition 
for me. Just you fancy that; from Herbert Loder 
to a kid of a student like me. Pouf! Now you can 
go on.” 

They accepted the invitation; John Gideon first; de¬ 
lighted at anything that delighted Phyllida; a little 
curious also to know the extent of his wife’s previous 
acquaintance with Loder. He was not well versed 
in matters appertaining to the art world; his knowl¬ 
edge of it dated from the day when Phyllida entered 
as a student at Salingthay, the animal painter’s studio 


208 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


at Richmond; but Loder’s name figured too frequently 
in the greater London dailies for him to be entirely 
ignorant of the standing of its owner, and he began to 
speculate for the first time on Ellen Gideon’s life be¬ 
fore she was Ellen Gideon; and on the vaguely 
known-of artist husband who had died when Phyllida 
was a baby. 

Patricia Ellen was outwardly enthusiastic — in¬ 
wardly hating this new interest that would come be¬ 
tween her and her darling. Sometimes she was almost 
tempted to wish that the child had been a domesticated, 
householdy, little person; to whom it would have been 
no wrong to keep her at home. Now she must share 
her with her step-father, with her career, and — she 
felt a premonition — with the Loders; and she must 
do it with seeming cheerfulness, or Phyllida would be 
hurt. 

The Christmas holidays passed all too quickly. The 
Mayoress’ daughter was much in request for both 
public and private functions, and found herself able, 
on one or two occasions, to extend a gracious patron¬ 
age to Mrs. Maurice; occasions which, it may be men¬ 
tioned, she enjoyed even more than she enjoyed most 
things. Mrs. Maurice began to foresee that her health 
would require that she should be a good deal away 
from Cirencester during this year when her brother- 
in-law and his wife were the first citizens of that 
borough; and especially during those portions of it 
when her step-niece-in-law would be at home. Pa^’cia 


MAY-DEW 


209 

Ellen she could snub unrebuked; though there is not 
much pleasure in snubbing a person who remains 
blandly serene under the process; but she was no 
match for Phyllida. 

Herbert Loder wrote to Patricia a day or two after 
Christmas, tentatively renewing old friendships; and 
she wrote back quite frankly, explaining her attitude 
of mind after Timothy’s death, and thanking him — 
this last with an effort that no one but herself knew 
— for his interest in Phyllida; smoothing the way for 
the girl to many days and week-ends with her new 
friends when she went back to Richmond after Christ¬ 
mas. The family adopted “ Timothy’s baby ” with 
enthusiasm, and mention began to be made in her 
letters of “ Mr. Loder’s eldest son, who is an archi¬ 
tect”; a gentleman who, during the Spring Term, 
passed through the successive stages of “ young Mr. 
Loder,” “ Mr. William Loder,” “ the eldest Loder 
son,” “ Bill Loder,” to plain “ Bill until, when it 
was intimated that “ Bill ” thought of coming to Ciren¬ 
cester for the Easter holidays, and which hotel did 
Daddy John think was the best to stay at? Daddy 
John remarked bluntly that he thought they’d better 
ask the young fellow to stay with them. 

“ He’s evidently after our little maid, darn him,” 
he concluded: “ I’d like to have a look at him before 
it goes any further.” 

He glanced across at his wife, and for the first time 
in his experience of her saw her serenity troubled. 


210 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


Poor Patricia Ellen! Further and further receded 
her dream of some golden future, where Gideon’s and 
its senior partner having been comfortably (if inex¬ 
plicably; dreams do not descend to details) disposed 
of, and Phyllida become a great artist, she would live 
with her and housekeep for her, as she had done for 
Timothy. And now Phyllida would not need her 
either in the present or the future. There never had 
been — bitterly she acknowledged the truth — much 
companionship between them, great as their affection 
was for each other. Patricia Ellen had lived too much 
in the work-a-day world to have much gift for playing. 
The sphere of “let’s pretend” was a blank to her; 
while it was the most thickly-populated section of the 
universe for Phyllida; but in that day which was to 
come some time, she would not always be so busy, and 
Phyllida would bring her fancies to her mother, as 
well as her tangible troubles and joys. But now it 
would be to someone else Phyllida would take her 
fancies. She had given up very much to win a home 
for the child; now she would have to give up the child 
herself. 

She might have known she would have to; that 
Phyllida with her gay, soft charm, would not be among 
the “ unwanteds ”; but somehow, she had never 
thought of it, and it had come as suddenly as the 
banging of a door. She sat at the end of the breakfast- 
table amid the beautiful Victorian mahogany which 


MAY-DEW 


211 


Mrs. Maurice could not imagine how any civilized 
being could endure, and her face puckered and quiv¬ 
ered with woe. 

“ We shall have to make the best of it,” John 
Gideon said ruefully. “ One thing, you know the 
family’s all right. But it won’t be cheerful work do¬ 
ing without her; it’s been bad enough when it’s only 
three months at a time for the Art School.” 

“ I don’t see that it makes much difference to you,” 
Patricia Ellen snapped miserably; “ she isn’t your 
child.” 

John Gideon looked amazed: this was another de¬ 
parture from the placid, immovable Ellen he had 
known. 

“ Well,” he replied hotly, though less so than 
might have been expected; “ I suppose she isn’t really, 
but I don’t think it’s made much difference in the way 
I feel about her; and I’m sure I’ve always tried to do 
by her as I’d have done by my son, anyway.” 

It was true, and Patricia Ellen knew it; but she 
could not bring herself to just acknowledgment at that 
moment, and she sat in strained silence. John looked 
at her again; his perceptions savoured of the bovine; 
but it was a kindly bovineness, and even he perceived 
that this meant more to the mother than the usual 
wrench of parting with an only girl. 

“Well,” he said again, “I’m awfully sorry; but 
there’s nothing else to do that I can see. Could you 


212 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


write? You know them, or at least his father, and I 
don’t, and you being her mother, it would come better 
from you.” 

It was an attempt at sympathy and understanding, 
and Patricia Ellen tried to be grateful. She wrote the 
letter duly, making her hospitable soul triumph over 
her maternal one; and Bill Loder and Phyllida trav¬ 
elled down together on the Wednesday evening in 
Holy Week. Phyllida’s mother caught her breath when 
she met them; they might not be formally engaged 
yet, but the actual words of proposal and acceptance 
would make little difference to these two, that she saw 
clearly enough. 

Bill proved to be a big burly fellow, with eyes and 
mouth that betokened intelligence and sympathy, and 
strong and capable hands — rather beautiful hands, 
the sole good-looking thing about him; while his every 
thought was plainly centred on Phyllida. He called 
her Flower of the Thyme. 

And Phyllida herself? Patricia Ellen caught her 
breath again. Phyllida was gathering her May-dew. 
To her mother’s mind came the image of white haw¬ 
thorn blossom, dream-like under the mist of a May 
dawn, the sun’s rays just touching it to life. There was 
nothing of elusion to invite pursuit about Phyllida. 
She loved, and she gave her love openly and trust¬ 
ingly, sure of understanding and acceptance — taking 
wooing and mating as simply as the birds do, or as 
men and women did in the first morning of the world. 


MAY-DEW 


213 

Bill made himself agreeable to both parent and step¬ 
parent that night and the next morning. Patricia 
Ellen could not deny that if the child must fall in love, 
she could not have done so more wisely. His profes¬ 
sion — and he appeared to be attaining eminence in it 
— was sufficiently akin to Phyllida’s for there to be 
real community of interest between them. He was 
thoroughly clean in body and mind, but he was thirty- 
two years old; and a man does not keep himself decent 
until that age without learning enough to guard inno¬ 
cent immaturity from too sudden disillusionment; and 
Phyllida, though not an ignorant baby, had been 
shielded, partly by her own innate inability to see 
evil, partly by the care of those with whom she lived, 
from the grosser side of life. 

They talked chiefly of the exhibition that Herbert 
Loder was arranging for some time in June of Phyl¬ 
lida’s pictures, and as many of her father’s as could 
be collected together. Loder, the elder, had spent a 
considerable amount of time and trouble getting into 
touch with their present owners, and obtaining prom¬ 
ises of loans. The “ wind ” series, for example, had 
travelled across the Atlantic — and Bill was instructed 
to ask his hostess if she would let him have any of 
Timothy’s sketches, and- 

“ One thing the Governor was awfully keen about, 
Mrs. Gideon, he said there was a picture of the White 
Horse Vale that Mr. Haddendon did, not long before 
Phyllida was born, if he remembered rightly. There 


214 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


was no name on it, but he thought it was called the 
‘ Gap in the Hills.’ If you could let him have that, 
he said-? ” 

“ I couldn’t.” Patricia Ellen’s voice was final. 

“ I’ll let you have the sketches,” she continued; 
“there are a good many; but my husband never 
wished that picture to be exhibited, and I would 
prefer to respect his wish.” 

“ I’m sorry,” said Bill. “ You’ll let me have a peep 
at it, Mrs. Haddendon? My father has spoken of 
it as one of the great pictures of the century — and 
I would like very much to see it.” 

Patricia Ellen promised: “But I shall not change 
my mind about the exhibition,” she said quietly. 

“The thing that puzzles me,” said John; he was 
looking a trifle bewildered — “ is how you find out 
where the others are. I mean, when a man’s been dead 
for twenty years, to know where his belongings are, it 
sounds impossible.” 

“Of course,” Bill explained patiently; “it would 
be difficult with anyone less celebrated.” (Fancy 
talking of a Haddendon water-colour as a “ belong¬ 
ing.” Didn’t the fellow know anything?) “ But 
with anyone of the standing that Timothy Hadden¬ 
don has now, the big art buyers can put their hands 
on all the larger works at a moment’s notice; they’re 
too valuable ever to be lost sight of. It’s only the 
small sketches and studies that are difficult to trace; 
and the Governor wants to get as many of those as 
possible to show his methods.” 



MAY-DEW 


215 

“ But,” John Gideon stammered, “ how much would 
the big pictures be worth? ” 

“ The 1 Wind’ set went to the Van Astorem collec¬ 
tion in Boston last year for three thousand pounds,” 
Bill informed him; “ but it was a private sale and the 
price was low. Of course, it’s only within the last year 
or two that the public has begun to appreciate him.” 

“ He sold the three for sixty pounds first of all,” 
Patricia Ellen put in, a trifle bitterly. 

“ Yes, I know; it was wicked; but everything was 
against him; his being so delicate, and hating to push 
himself, and then dying so young. Oh, I’ve heard the 
Governor curse by the hour about it; to do what he 
did in less than six years, and then to be cut off like 
that.” 

John Gideon sat stunned. Three thousand pounds 
for three pictures, and not even oil paintings like 
Phyllida’s, but water-colours! 

“ And how much will Phyllida get? ” he gasped at 
last. 

Bill hesitated; the conversation was rather of the 
Mrs. Bayham Badger order, and not much to his 
taste. Apart from the grossness of measuring work, 
real good picture work, in terms of £ s. d. But 
Patricia Ellen’s eyes met his from her end of the table, 
and they were so hungry, so avid for more; more ex¬ 
altation of her Timothy, that he went on to explain 
that Phyllida at present would not get anything enor¬ 
mous; but it would be such an extraordinary chance 
for her to be associated with such an exhibition; every- 


216 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


body who was anybody in the art world would be 
there because Haddendon’s work had never been all 
got together before. People would look at her things 
in the first place because she was Timothy Hadden¬ 
don’s daughter, and having looked once, would look 
again. She would never be — he turned to Phyllida 
herself, laughing — as great as her father, but she 
would have quite a pleasing little fame all to herself 
by and by. 

The two went out together later. Bill would have 
been quite happy had their walk been down one of 
the front door and bow window streets of Balham or 
Wandsworth; but he frankly admitted that it did 
add to the joy of life to look at the Abbey Church 
and visit the matchless old houses. 

“ They knew how to build such perfect houses , 1 ” 
he said as they turned up Cecily Hill towards the Park, 
“ those old Jacobean and Georgian builders; and to 
my mind, it’s the highest type of architecture. The 
mediaeval churches were marvels of beauty, but even 
one like that, ,; nodding his head back to the great 
square tower below them, “ doesn’t seem to me really 
any more to the glory of God than these homes where 
men and women could live, and bring up their chil¬ 
dren in beauty and honour. Have you ever thought 
what a difference it must make to people’s outlook, 
living in a house that satisfies their eyes and their 
minds, as well as just ministering to the needs of their 
bodies? ” 


MAY-DEW 


217 


“ Do you know,” said Phyllida, “ I’ve sometimes 
thought I’d like to plan a house for myself and build 
it. A house which would be small enough to be a 
home, but big enough to admire. I’ve even thought 
out furnishings, and the way I’d have the garden.” 

“ How would you have it? ” asked Bill, his face 
keen and tender. They were in the Park by now, 
and he fished out his note-book. “ Phyllida, let’s sit 
down under the trees — it’s so warm for April — and 
I’ll be architect for your house.” 

There was a fallen tree trunk, relic of some previous 
winter’s storm, lopped and waiting on the grass for a 
timber waggon to pick it up. They seated themselves 
on that, the two heads bent close over Bill’s note-book. 

“ There must be a room facing south-west, and 
one facing east,” said Phyllida, “ so that I can see the 
sunrise and the sunset and they must be good, square 
rooms; large windows, but plain, and good, straight 
lines on the outside; not a lot of fussy little pipes and 
gables. Open fireplaces.” 

“ Central heating is more hygienic and less work,” 
Bill grinned. 

“ Open fireplaces,” said Phyllida firmly. “ I’m not 
going to sit on a dismal wet day, and look at a pipe.” 

“ Open fireplaces.” Bill was sketch-planning 
rapidly. “ One flight of stairs? And a room looking 
north for a studio. A detached house with windows 
facing each way, and a good big hall? Yes; and where 
is it to be built? ” 


218 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


“ Somewhere not towney; woods handy for the birds 
and the squirrels, and a garden with big trees, and 
roses, all to be built with the house, of course.” Phyl- 
lida laughed. “ Aren’t we babies? ” she said gaily. 

Bill remained serious. “ Any objection to a place 
within train or motor-bike distance from town? ” he 
asked. 

“ Any — what? — Why? — Bill?-? ” her bril¬ 

liant eyes were shy and veiled. 

“ I was only funning when we started, but I’m not 
now.” He dropped his note-book on the grass, and 
laid his firm, strong hands on hers. “ Shall we plan 
that house together, Phyllida? Find a spot that has 
trees ready growing, and build it, and when it’s 
finished go and live out our lives there together? Oh, 
my little precious! ” for Phyllida had raised the 
hands that held hers and laid her lips on them. 

“ It doesn’t matter about the house, Bill,” she said, 
her soft voice thrilling. “ You may take me where 
you like, do with me what you like, because I know 
you will like what is right and good for me — and 
because I love you.” 

He held her close for a minute, then felt she was 
trembling, and went on talking with the whimsical 
tenderness she had learned to depend on, though every 
nerve in his body was tingling. 

“ We’re going to have our house, Phyllida; in the 
country, with trees and meadows and flowers; my 


MAY-DEW 


219 


Phyllida must have her May-dew.” He paused and 
turned her face to him. “ Why, what a little nervous 
child it is,” he said. “ You knew I was going to say 
it some time soon, didn’t you? Flower o’ the Thyme, 
if you didn’t you were the only one of our kinsfolk and 
acquaintance who didn’t. I made my intentions pretty 
plain, I’m afraid.” 

Phyllida looked up, looked down, blushed till she 
was a red may flower instead of a white one; then: 

“ I hoped you were,” she admitted reluctantly. 

“ Truthful James,” Bill teased. “ I hoped you were, 
too. No, it’s all right; you do get such a glorious 
colour when you’re being ragged, but I won’t do it 
any more till next time. Let’s talk house. Would 
you object to a ready-built one, altered to suit, madam, 
or must it be brand new? You see” — he dropped 
back into tenderness again — “ if we wait to build 
it will be a year before we can get into it. It wouldn’t 
do for you to go into a brand new house just as winter 
was coming on; it wouldn’t be dry; and I don’t want 
to wait a year before you are mine altogether to take 
care of. Could it be an old house, dear? ” 

“ Bill, I’ve told you, it doesn’t matter. A tent, or 
a caravan or an L.C.C. tenement, I wouldn’t mind, 
with you.” 

He picked her up bodily at that, and held her 
against him across his knees as he sat on the tree 
trunk, well aware that he dared not let himself go; 


220 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


but she was his so entirely, this small, passionate, won¬ 
derful thing; and he could not keep quite on the sur¬ 
face, though he tried his best. 

“ I’d have you remember that you are going to be 
married to a rising young architect,” he said, when he 
had recovered his balance again; “ and an L.C.C. ten¬ 
ement is not a fitting place for him to live. And there’s 
your studio.” 

“ Bill-” Phyllida sat up suddenly and sat back 

on to her own bit of tree trunk again, her hands still 
holding his wrist. “ Did you really mean what you 
said at breakfast about my having a little bit of fame 
of my own, but not being really great like Father? ” 

Bill considered the little eager face, inwardly a 
trifle surprised. He had never thought of Phyllida as 
ambitious. He was so himself, and knew it; though 
with an ambition that concerned itself more with the 
accomplishment of good and enduring work than with 
publicity. Phyllida’s might be of the same kind, but 
she had never seemed to take the slightest interest in 
the ultimate fate of her work. Intense joy and absorp¬ 
tion in the doing was hers; after it was done — finis; 
she began something else. Still, whatever her attitude, 
he must answer her truthfully; social amenities did 
not count in the realm of work. 

“ It was absolutely true,” he said after a pause for 
thought. “ I’m not belittling you, sweetheart; but your 
father had a gift that comes to the world about once 
in a generation; he belongs to the little handful who 



MAY-DEW 


221 


stand absolutely at the top of everything; men like 
Rembrandt and Turner and perhaps all the 

more so that his work is entirely in water colour; he’s 
the only really first rank man, or practically so, to 
keep entirely to it. You will have a public and a posi¬ 
tion; in all probability your pictures will make more 
appeal to some people than his, and you’ve a remark¬ 
ably good technique; but you will never be one of the 
very, very great. Your name won’t last through 
centuries, and if I’m not much mistaken, his will. I’m 
sorry if you are disappointed, but that’s how it is. 
Did you want to be great, Flower o’ the Thyme? ” 

“ No! ” said Phyllida with a shudder. “ Let’s walk 
a little way, Bill ”; and as they took the road that 
leads to the Wood House she explained herself further: 
“ I’m afraid of greatness,” she said shivering. “ Those 
that have it seem to have to pay, and pay, and pay. 
If they don’t give up all ordinary joy and happiness, 
it’s taken from them, and other people have to pay as 
well. I shall always paint, I think; I can’t imagine 
life without it; but I don’t want to paint pictures for 
future generations to admire and wonder at, and pay 
in advance myself in loneliness and desolation.” 

“ God forbid! ” said Bill, rather moved. “Phyl¬ 
lida, what have you got in your mind exactly? ” 

“ Didn’t Father pay? Think of his life! Struggling 
on at work that he hated, poor, and with bad health; 
just five years of peace and happiness, and then 
such an awful end. And hasn’t Mother paid, and 


222 PATRICIA ELLEN 

even Daddy John, who had nothing to do with it 
at all? ” 

Bill looked dubious. Before his eyes rose the image 
of Cirencester's dignified, prosperous Mayoress; grey 
of hair, pleasant of face, robust and tall of body. She 
did not suggest tragedy, and yet — those hungry 
eyes- 

“ I know Mr. Loder thinks she ought not to have 
married again, and always looks upon it as a little 
slur on Father. What was she to do? She told you 
what those pictures fetched when Father painted them. 
She had nothing and I was ill, and she had the chance 
of a home for me. She didn't love Daddy John; she 
isn't even half as fond of him as I am; and when he’s 
away she takes Father's portrait and letters to bed with 
her, now , to this day. Why he married her, I don’t 
know; he's better to her now, but he was hateful at 
first. I used to see people look at her in the street, and 
sneer and laugh. And she’d married him for me, and I 
knew it, and could do nothing; couldn’t even let her see 
I knew; had to keep my feelings away from her, and 
hurt her worse. And when I got to love Daddy John 
— and I couldn’t help that, he has been goodness itself 
to me — it hurt her more. And now Father’s pictures 
are fetching all those thousands of pounds, and people 
almost worship them, and she, his wife, had to marry 
another man that she didn’t care twopence about, to 
keep body and soul together in his child. Hasn’t she 
paid? ” 

The small face was fierce. Bill stared thoughtfully 



MAY-DEW 


223 


in front of him. So that was why Patricia Ellen Had- 
dendon, wife of a genius, and, if Loder the elder had 
spoken truly, worshipping the very ground he trod on, 
had married this worthy, commonplace, young shop¬ 
keeper, sixteen years her junior. 

“ Happy the people who have no history,” Bill 
quoted slowly. “ How did you know it all, Phyl- 
lida? ” 

“ Cousin Sarah Cooksey told me some: about 
Father’s death in the snow when no one could get to 
them; and of course I knew about her giving up her 
post in Bristol because the doctor said I was not to live 
there any longer. I guessed some, when I was older 
and able to understand things; and she has told me 
some without knowing it, when she has been talking 
about Father. Do you know she never mentioned his 
name to me until I was nearly nine years old, and then 
seemed as if she couldn’t tell me enough.” She stopped 
and wrung her hands together with a curious dramatic 
little gesture. 

“ I never remember her not at work,” she said; 
“ and she has kept herself shut in, and shut in, till 
although she loves me so, the only return I can make is 
to go and be happy away from her. Bill, I hope and 
pray there will never be much greatness for either of 
us. I want a home and people I love.” 

“ Flower o’ the Thyme will only grow in shaded 
corners,” said Bill quietly. “ We’d better be turning, 
dear; it’s nearly tea-time.” 

They walked back almost to the Park gates in 


224 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


silence; but just as they were emerging from under 
the shadow of the great trees, Bill stopped the girl by 
a gesture, and turned her face to face with him again. 

“ Yes? ” she said enquiringly. 

“ I can give you the answer to your fears/’ he said. 

“ Yes? ” Phyllida said again. 

“Yes, Flower o’ the Thyme,” a little unsteadily; 
“what ill chance the good God sends us, we’ll accept 
and make the best of; but we shan’t ever want to grow 
away from our home ourselves, because, Flower o’ 
the Thyme, there will be rooms for children in it.” 

He stopped, not quite sure if he had been wise to say 
it, after all, Phyllida stood so very still; but when she 
raised her lips to his, he knew he had done well to 
speak out his secret dream; and they went happily 
back down the hill. 


CHAPTER II 


M RS. MAURICE GIDEON suffered severely in 
her inside feelings that summer. She had 
been annoyed when three years previously 
John Gideon had been asked to stand for the Town 
Council, and no such hint was ever dropped to his 
younger brother. Not, of course, that any man of 
education and culture would wish to be associated with 
that very variegated assembly; still, it showed a lack 
of good taste. 

Thus Mrs. Maurice to one of the few people it was 
possible to know in Cirencester, Mrs. Doctor Grant, 
who repeated the remark to her husband. He, a 
coarse-minded man, replied that Cirencester folk 
didn’t care a tuppeny cuss about the canons of good 
taste; they wanted a man who’d keep the rates down 
and help look after the town, and not think himself 
too good for the job, or have his wife think it for him. 

Then came the Mayoralty. Mrs. Maurice simmered 
with the wrath of conscious and despised superiority, 
and could give it no outward expression, in case — hor¬ 
rid thought — it might be assumed that she was jealous 
of that woman. All through the winter she had had 
to watch that Public House Creature opening bazaars 

225 


2 26 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


and Missionary Exhibitions; presenting prizes at 
Sunday School Treats; giving her patronage to con¬ 
certs, dramatic performances and lectures; hob-nob¬ 
bing with Countesses and Baronets’ wives and Dames, 
and various of the great ones of the earth; while she 
herself, the Perfect Lady, the exponent of how to rise 
above the circumstances in which one was placed, re¬ 
mained one of the unnoticed crowd. 

And the sickening fuss they made of the woman! 
Of course, they had to be civil on public occasions, but 
that she and her lump of a husband, who simply 
exuded shop, should be invited about to luncheons and 
teas at the great houses of the neighbourhood, because 
their advice was required on the conduct of Women’s 
Institutes and Boys’ Clubs and the like — it simply 
passed comprehension. To think of people like Lady 
Cottesdon and Alexandra, Marchioness of Downhill, 
coming to inspect the Gideon methods of dealing with 
their shop assistants, and having tea with the Mayoress 
afterwards in that absolutely prehistoric drawing¬ 
room; what must they have imagined they had 
dropped into? And not once, not once, had Mrs. 
Maurice been asked to help with any of the official 
functions except the Mayoress’ children’s party at 
Christmas, when, of course, no one was there except 
the tradespeople’s wives and families. 

The crowning insult, however, was the exhibition 
of pictures. Phyllida’s engagement was not altogether 


MAY-DEW 


227 


a surprise; it was a thousand pities that these nice, 
gentlemanly, young fellows did get caught by scheming 
little minxes in a position inferior to their own; but 
they always did, and it was only what Mrs. Maurice 
had expected would happen, when the girl managed 
to inveigle John Gideon into sending her to that ruin¬ 
ously expensive Art School, when she ought to have 
been getting her living as a shop girl or a servant. 
Still, so long as they were engaged, it would be better, 
for Maurice’s sake, to recognise the fact; so to Phyl- 
lida and Bill, week-ending at Cirencester just prior 
to the Exhibition, came an invitation to tea on Sun¬ 
day. John Gideon delivered the message, and: 

“ You’d better go, Phyllida; she’ll kick up the 
dickens of a dust if you don’t; and be civil, you little 
baggage! ” 

“ I always am,” said Phyllida. “ I don’t know any¬ 
one to whom I am so scrupulously polite as I am to 
Mrs. Maurice.” 

She was very polite. And because she felt annoy¬ 
ance gathering in her hostess’ mind when the subject 
was broached, she dilated on the Exhibition and her 
father’s pictures; talking art jargon of planes, and 
atmospheres, and tones, till Bill aimed a vicious kick 
at her as he handed the cake-stand; whereupon, she 
changed the point of view to the hostess-ship for the 
all-important fortnight. 

“ I hate talking to strangers, you know, especially 


228 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


all these big people who are coming; so Mother’s go¬ 
ing to be there most of the time, and Mrs. Loder will 
take on for the days when she can’t be there.” 

“ Won’t it be a little difficult for your mother to 
get away? She is so much in request, and ” — 
sweetly — “I should be most pleased to run up for 
a day or two, if I could be of any help.” 

She would not be kept out of everything, and by 
this minx of a child. 

“ Oh no, thanks awfully. Mother has arranged to 
be away, except for just one or two days, and she is 
quite looking forward to it. Practically all the men 
who used to stay with her and Father at Beckhampton 
are coming, and it will be so nice for her to meet them 
again. Oh, by the way,” getting up to go; “ you had 
your invitation card, didn’t you? ” 

Mrs. Maurice had; but was not sure about going, 
unless she could be of any use; it was hardly worth the 
journey, just for the day. 

“ Oh, well,” Phyllida said, “ I don’t expect it would 
interest you very much. Still, we should have been 
pleased to see you. Good-bye, and thanks so much 
for a pleasant afternoon.” 

Mrs. Maurice remained fuming. Go to this ridicu¬ 
lous Exhibition? Nothing should induce her to go; 
to be snubbed and flouted and slighted. Phyllida was 
quite right; she was not interested, and she would stay 
at home. Maurice, however, unexpectedly intervened, 
informing his wife with a putting-his-foot-down man- 


MAY-DEW 


229 

ner, that she was letting her dislike of Ellen make her 
quite absurd, and of course she would have to go; they 
would both have to. They could take two or three 
days, and do some theatres, and get some enjoyment 
out of it, but go they must. 

“ And, after all, it is a good advertisement for the 
shop,” he finished maliciously; he was not above giv¬ 
ing his wife a sly dig at times over her social 
aspirations. 

To the Exhibition they went, therefore; and Mrs. 
Maurice had to witness the spectacle of the great world 
passing through the doors of that Bond Street Gallery: 
to see “ The Haddendon Exhibition ” staring up at her 
from every daily paper; to learn that this opportunity 
of seeing Timothy Haddendon’s collected life work 
was regarded as the opportunity of a decade; that Bill 
Loder was esteemed lucky far and away beyond his 
deserts, and lastly, to be made to understand, indig¬ 
nantly, resentfully, but with a devastating clearness, 
that Ellen Gideon, as the widow of Timothy, and 
the mother of Phyllida Haddendon, was received with 
welcome wherever she chose; but that the connections 
and belongings of her second marriage were unrecog¬ 
nisable outsiders. “ Possibly there were such peo¬ 
ple ”; to quote the dictum of an older day, acceptance 
of the fact condescended no further. 

One other was also having the same point of view 
pressed home to him during that fortnight, and that 
was John Gideon. 


230 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


He had won slowly through hatred and contempt to 
a grudging liking and companionship for the woman 
who shared his name and ordered his household so 
admirably. He had even lately surprised in himself 
a sort of admiration for her personally, apart from her 
business qualities; there must be something fine in her 
to attract people so, and he knew what a tower of 
strength she had been to many in need or trouble; 
but it was her business side which he considered most 
respect-worthy, which he thought others must chiefly 
esteem. To him, business was the first thing to be con¬ 
sidered; a man’s standing among his fellows he reck¬ 
oned by the probity of his trading methods, and the 
size of his bank balance; and he had secretly despised 
Ellen’s first husband, because he left his wife and 
daughter so utterly unprovided for. Now it appeared 
there was another world than the business one, of more 
importance in its own estimation, and of far greater 
intelligence; among whose inhabitants such material 
items as bank balances were of secondary importance. 
If one happened to be lucky enough to command big 
money for one’s work, well and good; if not, well and 
good also; the one thing by which success was meas¬ 
ured was the quality of the work. 

Phyllida was not nearly the gay understandable 
child she had been at home. Two very great folk, 
one a minor Royalty, had come to the Exhibition one 
morning; had been pleased to approve and, on Phyl- 
lida’s side of the show, to purchase, and say kind 


MAY-DEW 


231 


things. He had looked round for the child, she 
had been standing listening intently to a shabby, 
middle-aged man, who was criticizing her pictures, as 
he thought, very rudely, and when he had suggested 
that she came forward and spoke to the eminent ladies, 
and thanked them, she had seemed really annoyed, 
and told him afterwards that he shouldn’t have in¬ 
terrupted when Mr. Kepton was taking the trouble to 
show her things. Moreover, the ladies themselves had 
greeted the shabby man with respect, almost with 
veneration. It would appear that the Court Circular 
folks were as unexpected as the rest of this topsy¬ 
turvy circle. 

And then, the Gap in the Hills! It really seemed 
as if plain, sensible Ellen, the one bit of the old 
straightforward, business world left in this queer new 
atmosphere, was getting as visionary as the rest. She 
had persisted in declining to allow the picture to be ex¬ 
hibited; but after much worrying, she had permitted 
this same Kepton man and a great art dealer to journey 
down to Cirencester with her on a day when some 
Mayoress’ duty called her there, to see it. The art 
dealer, after a pause of stupefied, adoring silence, 
offered to buy the picture from her at any price she 
liked to name, and was coldly refused; and Kepton 
and Loder, and all the whole clique of them, had up¬ 
held her in her refusal. 

Why wouldn’t it have done if Phyllida or somebody 
had copied the picture, and then it had been sold? 


232 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


He had privately asked the dealer, a man of interna¬ 
tional celebrity and Hebraic nose, what he would have 
given for it; and was told anything up to two 
thousand pounds or even beyond, coupled with the 
information that Mr. Van Astorem, the owner of the 
“ Wind ” series, had cabled instructions to buy any¬ 
thing of Haddendon’s available, at any price. 

“ And that picture, it is a marvel, a miracle of space 
and sunlight, a thing to say one’s prayers to. But 
I had not much hope. No one who had that would 
ever part with it unless they were obliged. The little 
girl? Oh yes, she is good, quite good, though imma¬ 
ture, of a conception and insight quite remarkable in 
one so young; and Salingthay, whom I have talked to, 
he says she is of a steady and persevering application. 

But these things-” and he wandered round to 

The End of a Nation; a fat beauty worshipper in a 
frock coat, and white spats. 

John Gideon sought explanation from Bill. Bill 
seemed a little nearer to him than most of the people 
he was meeting, and he told him so. 

Bill considered, pipe in mouth. 

“ It’s a difficult thing to explain,” he said at length. 
“ I do understand what you mean, because I belong to 
both sides. I was brought up in the art atmosphere 
pure and simple, but being an architect, I’ve had to 
look at the business point of view as well. I think 
the difference is that the business world, which, roughly 
speaking, ministers to men’s bodies, remains to a cer- 



MAY-DEW 


233 


tain extent the same; people always need food and 
clothing and warmth and means of transport. The 
method of supplying the need varies from generation 
to generation, but the need itself doesn’t change. The 
business man has to keep abreast of the times, or, at 
most, about half a year ahead of them, so that he is 
able to compute his success almost immediately. But 
the world that ministers to the mind, and more particu¬ 
larly the emotional side of it which is served by pic¬ 
tures, music and poetry, moves forward in successive 
stages of development, as the phase of civilization in 
which it finds itself, is able to understand it. Now 
and again it happens that a man seems to skip a stage, 
and advance to the next; so that it takes a generation 
or more for the public to catch up to him. The man 
who is able to do that is a genius of the first rank, and 
succeeding generations acknowledge him as such; but 
in his own lifetime he is unrecognised and unre¬ 
warded. That is why immediate financial results are 
very little to go by in this sort of thing. If people don’t 
buy a man’s work, and don’t care for it, it may be 
because he’s a freak and a fool; but it may also be be¬ 
cause he is a genius who has developed ahead of his 
time.” 

“ That was what happened to Phyllida’s father? ” 

“ That was what happened to Phyllida’s father. Of 
course,” Bill went on, laughing; “ I'don’t mean to say 
that there isn’t an awful lot of bunkum being talked 
about true art being above the comprehension of the 
common herd; and artistic damnation being in inverse 


234 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


ratio to public success, and all that sort of thing; espe¬ 
cially by the kids who are just leaving the schools. 
Phyllida’s contemporaries include a fair proportion of 
young asses, but, speaking broadly, I think the dis¬ 
tinction is as I have said. (Bit of a sermon,” he 
added to himself; “ still, he wanted it.”) 

John thanked him, and retired to ruminate. He 
could see the point of view in a way, and he supposed 
there was something rather fine in this attitude of not 
caring the toss of a coin where your next meal was 
coming from, provided your conscience was clear about 
the quality of the work you did. Still, he noticed 
that some of the loftiest-talking were ready 
enough to wolf into cakes and bread and butter at the 
teas Ellen gave every afternoon, and didn’t choose the 
plainest kinds either; and he couldn’t for the life of 
him see that a bank balance need make a man slovenly 
and careless, or a woman. Certainly, Phyllida didn’t 
talk that stuff, but in a way she had the same sort of 
mind; she didn’t seem to much care whether her pic¬ 
tures sold or not, provided two or three high-brows 
said they were good. 

Well, at any rate he could see that she had the 
bank balance as well as the artistic outlook. Nothing 
had been said about a settlement, but of course, he 
should give her a good one. Shouldn’t say anything 
about it till it was done. Mrs. Maurice would make 
some of her pleasant remarks — poor old Maurice, 
that’s what came of marrying a society lady, though 
she didn’t cut much ice by the side of some of those 


MAY-DEW 


235 

that came to see Ellen. He wondered what Ellen 
would say about the settlement? She didn’t much like 
his doing things for Phyllida, he knew that, although 
she always made out she was pleased. Funny thing; 
a year or two ago, he could have gambled on what 
Ellen would say to almost anything that might crop up; 
now you never knew where to have her, she was so 
queer and fidgety and different. He supposed the 
thought of Phyllida’s marriage upset her a bit; and 
then there was meeting all her first husband’s friends, 
and all the extra work of the Mayoralty. It was a 
bit too much for her all coming together. Well, he 
would try and keep quiet over it; she had been pretty 
patient over one or two scarlet episodes that he felt 
jolly low down about now, and he would get that settle¬ 
ment business put in train; they wouldn’t have the 
child much longer. 

For Phyllida and Bill had found the house that 
was to be a home, out towards Redhill, and the wed¬ 
ding was fixed for September 7th. A roomy, com¬ 
fortable house it was, with a good garden and plenty 
of trees; mid-Victorian, as Phyllida told Mrs. Maurice 
with an impertinent twinkle, nothing at all striking 
about it, but well-built, dry and sunny, with space to 
build on, if they ever wanted to. The garden and 
the view had clinched matters for Phyllida, also: 

“ I don’t think I ever want a new house, Bill,” she 
said; “ this has such a nice feel about it, as if people 
have been busy and contented and happy here.” 

“ Ghosts? ” asked Bill teasingly. 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


236 

“ Yes, in a way; but cheerful ghosts. I think, some¬ 
how, that people leave the impression of themselves 
upon their houses, and an old house always feels to 
me more companionable than a new one. Perhaps it’s 
silly, but I do feel like that. That new barrack that the 
Maurice Gideons are putting up for themselves, 
now-” 

“ Oh, Lord! ” said Bill. 

Mrs. Maurice’s new house was a point to be avoided 
with him. They had had a private view during an 
extremely uncomfortable afternoon’s entertainment at 
the beginning of July. Mr. and Mrs. John Gideon, 
Phyllida and Bill had been invited to Sunday tea and 
supper; and Phyllida, nettled by one or two ladylike 
snubs to her mother, had conceived the intention of 
making sundry matters clear to her hostess; that she 
had no thought of asking her step cousins to be brides¬ 
maids; that the wedding reception, to which several 
notabilities were coming, was to be held in Daddy 
John’s garden, behind the row of shops; that Mrs. 
Maurice was not expected to be a central figure; and 
that the ceremony was to be as plain and quiet as 
possible. 

“ I think,” said Phyllida clearly, her innocent 
eyes gazing directly at a framed wedding group of Mr. 
and Mrs. Maurice Gideon, “ that unless one is really a 
great person, a showy display at a wedding is rather 
ostentatious and vulgar. Of course, for anyone like 
Lady Margaret Chelmsford,” flicking at an open 



MAY-DEW 


237 

Tatler, “ it’s quite right and proper, but for ordinary 
middle-class people, who are going to live in an or¬ 
dinary sized house, with one, or at most, two servants, 
I think it is silly and rather horrid, as if one was 
asking to be looked at.” 

“ I quite agree with you, my dear,” said John 
Gideon heartily; then had an awful spasm of memory 
and became overwhelmingly conscious of the wedding 
group. Bill rushed in abruptly with something about 
the political situation; but Phyllida proceeded to give 
information as to their furniture without allowing a 
digression. 

“ Mother is coming up to help us buy; she is a 
very good judge of furniture, and I want her to see 
the house. We aren’t going in for anything alarmingly 
fashionable, Bill and I; we shall keep off periods,” 
with a fleeting glance round the Sheraton style draw¬ 
ing-room. “ It takes a baby gold mine to carry out 
that sort of thing properly; and I don’t care for it 
half done, neither does Bill, so we shall just be plain 
and comfortable.” 

“ But can your mother be spared from the busi¬ 
ness? ” Mrs. Maurice’s voice was like thin vinegar; 
her drawing-room was the pride of her heart. 

“ Oh, she’s got to be, and we are choosing four days 
when there’s no Mayoralty stuff on. I believe she’s 
looking forward to it, aren’t you, Mummie? ” 

Patricia Ellen smiled with stiff lips, and suggested 
that it was time they heard something about Mrs. 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


238 

Maurice’s new house, as a change from Phyllida’s; 
whereupon, Phyllida, catching a threatening glint from 
her step-father on one side and Bill on the other, per¬ 
ceived that she had carried her labours far enough, 
and proposed, in veritable innocence this time, that 
they should all walk down and see the progress. Mrs. 
Maurice gushingly desired to have Mr. Loder’s opinion 
as a real London architect. So on Bill, worshipper of 
straight lines and early eighteenth century elevations, 
burst a vision of pseudo-Tudor-Italian-Swiss Chalet- 
cum-local-builder that struck him dumb. 

“ We aren’t having an architect,” said Mrs. Maurice, 
stating the obvious. Bill groaned that he supposed 
not. “ Because it means another fee; there are such 
nice illustrations in the housing magazines that there 
didn’t seem any need; and I thought I could get just 
exactly what I wanted, if it was only me and a builder, 
though I expect you’ll be shocked. But now we have 
an architect in the family-” 

Phyllida registered an inward vow of repayment. 

“-there are one or two points 1 should like your 

advice about, if you are sure you don’t mind my tak¬ 
ing ' advantage of your coming like this. Of course, 
it’s practically finished, but things could be altered 
if you thought better.” 

She extracted about five guineas worth of in¬ 
formation from him on the subject of drainage 
and ventilation; and thanked him so effusively that 
he reflected ruefully that his efforts at interest must 




MAY-DEW 


239 

have been less palpable than they seemed. He could 
have wrung Phyllida’s neck for letting him in for this; 
and why couldn’t her mother help things out a bit? 
She hardly opened her lips. The climax came when, 
as they turned to go back to the old house and supper, 
Mrs. Maurice asked him if he didn’t think it really was 
rather sweet, with all the cute little gables and things? 

“ I thought of asking Phyllida if she would have 
her wedding reception here,” the lady continued. 
“ We shall have moved in and shall be quite straight 
by then; and it would be so much pleasanter than at 
the back of the shop. My brother-in-law is so very 
commercial, he does not think of these things.” 

“ Oh, thank you,” said Bill promptly, with an em¬ 
phasis that surprised his hearer; “ but we couldn’t 
think of putting you to so much trouble; and I expect 
Phyllida would prefer to stay in her old home until 
the last.” 

“ Phyllida,” he said solemnly, when they had at 
length eaten their way through an interminable, though 
unsatisfying, supper, and started on their return walk. 
“If you have a wedding party at that house, or at 
any house belonging to that female, I won’t marry 
you. Why couldn’t somebody have said something to 
help me out? Having to admire that nightmare! And 
I believe she thinks I like it.” 

Bill groaned again, and on this afternoon of plan¬ 
ning and measuring at their own house, groaned once 
more at the recollection, and wondered afresh at 


240 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


Patricia Ellen’s curious silence and repression on that 
evening. She had been uncertain to deal with all the 
week end; quite unlike her usual self. 

But Patricia Ellen could not help it. She, the 
steady-going reliable woman, was swayed by moods 
and nerves that summer to an incredible extent. She 
knew that her husband was puzzled at her behaviour; 
knew that he was being truly forbearing and generous 
to her unusual whims; knew that he was hurt when 
she preferred to go without him to see Phyllida’s future 
home; knew that he had expected and hoped to give 
his “ little maid ” away to her husband, and had been 
hurt again when she had announced her intention of 
doing so herself; knew that her thanks for his pro¬ 
posed marriage settlement had been curt and ungra¬ 
cious in the extreme; so much so that he had left her 
after barely mentioning the proposal, without giving 
the slightest hint as to the amount or terms of the gift. 
She supposed it would be a fairly large cheque, and 
she ought to make some acknowledgment of his kind¬ 
ness; she was being bearish and dog-in-the-mangerish. 
Still, she could not help it. 

Timothy’s baby was safe; she hugged the thought 
to her, safe beyond all fearing. Bill Loder was finan¬ 
cially comfortable now; would be more than comfort¬ 
able in years to come probably; while the more she 
saw of him, the more she liked him, and his Flower 
o’ the Thyme would be sheltered from every wind that 
blew. 


MAY-DEW 


241 


But Phyllida was her baby, too, and was going from 
her, and life looked an arid and lonely thing enough. 

She had never minded the hard work, the responsi¬ 
bility, the anxiety of business; she had been building 
a future for Phyllida. But now Phyllida’s future 
would be someone else’s care; and the work loomed 
burdensome before her. Why, she asked herself, pas¬ 
sionately, should she go on slaving, heaping up riches 
simply that “ our respected fellow townsman, Mr. 
John Gideon, with his usual boundless generosity,” 
should head every subscription list; and Rose Gideon 
squander money on herself and her children, planning 
education and upbringing for them far and away be¬ 
yond their station? She supposed she would have to 
stay where she was, John seemed to expect it, and 
think her necessary, and she was not so forgetful of 
justice as not to acknowledge his claim on her. She 
knew she was belittling him unduly in her mind; that 
there was much generosity and kindly thought of his 
that never found its way into public subscription lists. 
She was perfectly well aware that it was largely her 
own doing to work as she had done, and that she had 
enjoyed it; but at present she had no mind for any¬ 
thing, but that Phyllida seemed to be coming nearer 
to her than she had ever been, and she was losing 
her and getting nothing in exchange. 

She was fifty-six and extraordinarily, cruelly strong. 
There was no reason why she should not live another 
twenty-five or thirty years, or even longer, and what 
was there to look forward to? 


CHAPTER III 


D ADDY JOHN, Mummie is going to sleep with 
me to-night, if you don’t mind. I thought I 
would like it on my last night.’’ 

“ You’re not crying, Phyllida? ” 

“No, Daddy John; I’m very, very happy, but I 
can’t help knowing that to-morrow isn’t going to be 
nearly such a wonderful day for Mummie as it is for 
me, and I want to put her first as long as I can. And 
Daddy John ”— the brilliant eyes were softer than 
ever —“ I may not see you in the morning, not to 
have time to say much, before I am Bill’s wife; so 
while I am still your little maid, Phyllida, I want to 
thank you, oh, over and over again, with all the thanks 
I have, for all your goodness and kindness to me.” 

Daddy John cut her short and kissed her, laughing 
to hide the fact that he was not feeling too clear voiced 
himself. Hateful business, weddings; but as for what 
he’d done for the child, he had done it to please him¬ 
self as much as anybody, and he told her so. “ And 
now you go up to bed; to-morrow will be ‘ all bustie 
and stink,’ as our old porter used to say, and you must 
get to sleep.” 

She said good-night and turned to go upstairs. She 
had come down to the office, where he was writing 


242 


MAY-DEW 


243 

letters, wanting to catch him alone. The art student 
friend who was to be her only bridesmaid, had already 
sought repose; they had been gossiping for an hour 
while Bill and her mother were talking in the drawing¬ 
room. It was close on eleven o’clock, however, and he 
would have to be going soon, back to the hotel where 
he and his father and mother were sleeping that night. 
She heard the door open, indeed, as she stood at the 
bottom of the stairs, and waited there in the half light, 
to see him as he came down. 

She was not feeling a very jubilant bride; she was 
a sensitive, intuitive, small thing; and her thoughts 
had followed her mother’s back rather closely in these 
last few days to that other marriage twenty-five years 
ago — so utterly happy in its opening; so blackly 
tragic in its close; and she wanted to feel Bill beside 
her for a minute. It was really not much more. A 
laughing, “ Why, Flower 0’ the Thyme, I thought you 
were snoring long ago. What’s the matter, little one? 
Nerves? Stage fright? ’Fraid the frock won’t go 
right to-morrow? ” 

“ No,” she said, holding to his coat sleeve; “it’s 
only that I started thinking. Bill, you are strong, 
aren’t you? Not likely to get ill, or anything? ” 

He nodded understandingly. “ Strong as an ox,” 
he said; “never had anything except measles and 
chicken-pox, and a black eye. Now to go to bed; your 
mother’s in the drawing-room.” He paused, added 
rather gravely: “That’s a great woman, Phyllida,” 


244 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


then kissed her, and with a gay murmur of “ See you 
to-morrow ” was gone. 

Phyllida went upstairs; she did not feel at all like 
bed; neither, apparently, did Patricia Ellen. They 
looked over the wedding presents again. John 
Gideon’s table silver, massive and heavy; Mr. and 
Mrs. Maurice’s silver vases, elegantly chased, highly 
ornamented, and light in weight; beautiful and costly 
things from artists, professional friends of Bill’s, and 
highly placed folk who knew and greatly respected her 
mother: together with these, other presents, small and 
poor: sketches in cheap, sometimes home-made frames, 
from other students who had not had a Daddy John 
to finance them; an exquisitely carved hand screen 
from an old craftsman in Chelsea, which Phyllida had 
cried over, knowing the self denial it represented; a 
handsome clock from the staff of Gideon’s; home¬ 
made d’oyleys and sachets from one or two individual 
members of whom she had been especially fond. 

Phyllida touched the things gently; laughed over 
the silver vases, and gave her mother a cuddle for the 
house linen that had been Ellen Gideon’s present. The 
elder woman kissed her gently. 

“ I am going to give you the rest of my present 
to-night,” she said. “ We had better go on upstairs, 
Phyllida, it’s getting on for twelve, and you shall 
have it there; I’ve put it ready.” 

Phyllida looked surprised and questioning, but 
something in Patricia Ellen’s manner held her silent, 


MAY-DEW 


245 

till they arrived in the room at the back of the house 
where Patricia Ellen had decided her future on that 
November night ten years before. 

She took a big parcel from the chest of drawers. 

“ It is your father’s sketches,” she said quietly; 
“ I think you should have them now; you have more 
right to them than I have.” The steady stillness 
which held her wavered for a moment; “ I have only 
kept the Gap in the Hills; that I must have, and 
his portrait, till I die.” She wavered more, holding 
Timothy’s baby close against her. “ Phyllida, you 
are happy? Satisfied with what I have been able to 
do for you? ” 

Her voice was forlorn; more than ever did she de¬ 
sire to sing her Nunc Dimittis; to have done with her 
fight, and run her course; but there was to be no de¬ 
parting in peace for her. Instead, she must stay and 
superintend the buying and selling of silks and serges 
and sports outfits; care for the welfare of the women 
and girls engaged in that work; see that breakfast, 
dinner, tea and supper were properly cooked and 
served to John Gideon and any friends he might de¬ 
sire. It was not an inspiriting prospect; indeed, she 
felt as if nothing could ever inspirit her again. If only 
Phyllida thought she had done her best, she might 
hope that one day Timothy would think so too, and she 
could settle down to the business and the housekeeping 
with a better heart, with even a kind of pity for the 
man whose youth she had stolen, and some sort of 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


246 

friendly respect for their long association, and his 
honesty and cheerfulness. If only Phyllida were 
satisfied- 

And then came Phyllida’s answer, full and forceful: 

“ Mother, I don’t quite know how to say it, what 
I want to say; but I think I am as happy as you and 
Father were when he painted the Gap in the Hills. 
I am marrying the man I love with all my heart. I 
have had, the most beautiful growing-up time any girl 
could ever have, and I owe the whole of it, every least 
little bit, to you first, and then to Daddy John. Oh, 
Mother, Mother!-” 

She was half crying, as she had half cried down¬ 
stairs, contrasting the wifehood and husbandhood that 
lay before her and Bill, with the wifehood and hus¬ 
bandhood that was her mother’s and Daddy John’s. 
Even now, she could not speak openly to Patricia 
Ellen as she would have spoken to Bill. She wanted to 
tell her that she understood the sacrifice that had been 
made for her; the tragedy that underlay the cheerful 
businesslikeness of “ our esteemed Mayoress,” but she 
was only able to cling and kiss and fondle. Patricia 
Ellen was satisfied, however; she did not want things 
put into too plain words; speech is not always a safe 
outlet, and she was, after all, John Gideon’s wife. She 
went to bed and to sleep with a more tranquil heart. 

Phyllida’s wedding was an informal one so far as 
the guests were concerned. She had firmly refused to 




MAY-DEW 


247 

have printed invitations; even committing the un¬ 
heard-of enormity of writing to people herself to ask 
them to come. 

“ After all,” she said, “ it’s my wedding and Bill’s, 
and we are going to have it the way we like. I don’t 
care whether there’s half a line or half a column in 
the local papers; I want my friends to come and see 
me married, and no one else.” 

The consequence was a mixum gatherum which 
included among local lights, Alexandra, Marchioness 
of Downhill, who had early announced her intention 
of coming to see “ our little artist” married; and an 
old woman who had been a “ char ” at the Grammar 
School when Phyllida first went there, and who had 
sent “ Miss Phyllida, dear,” myrtle blossom for her 
bridal wreath from a bush the old lady herself had 
grown. There were several Londoners, including 
Kepton, and a brace of titles conferred at the last 
Birthday Honours, in recognition of services to British 
Art; and a fairly large crowd of all and sundry, both 
spectators and guests. The Abbey Church was, in¬ 
deed, nearly full, and the little open space that curves 
round from the west door to the south porch and the 
Market Place, was thronged with gazers, who raised 
something almost like a murmured cheer as the 
Mayoress stepped down from her car with the bride. 

Patricia Ellen’s mind in the Church was confused 
and dreamy: the happiness of bride and groom; Bill’s 
heartfelt responses; Phyllida’s rapt face under her 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


248 

myrtle blossom, blended themselves curiously with 
Avebury Church twenty-five years ago, and Timothy’s 
adoring eyes opposite her; brought also a great pity 
for the man and woman who had stood, at eight o’clock 
of a foggy November morning, ten years back, where 
Phyllida and Bill were standing now; and had gone 
through a travesty of the same service without a 
soul to wish them God-speed. One half-forgotten in¬ 
cident of that other wedding came back into her brain: 
“ Never knew what the ‘ P ’ stood for,” from John 
Gideon as they were signing the register. 

“ My mother named me after her mistress, but 
everybody always calls me Ellen.” She remembered 
how she had winced as she said it. 

The reception was as informal, as friendly, as every¬ 
thing else connected with the odd, companionable wed¬ 
ding. Phyllida was at her gayest; not once in the 
afternoon did she touch gravity, till, dressed in motor¬ 
ing tweeds — Herbert Loder’s gift had been a two- 
seater car and they were going for their honeymoon 
in it — she picked up her myrtle wreath, put it care¬ 
fully in a box, and turned to say her own private good¬ 
bye to her mother, the box in her hand. 

“ I am taking this, Mummie,” she said, “ because 
— I have asked Bill and he agrees — we are going 
round through Swindon to Avebury and joining the 
main Bath Road again there. I wanted to lay my 
wreath on Father’s grave. I think,” she added with 
the simplicity that characterized her, “ he will like it.” 


MAY-DEW 


249 


The mother held her close in silence, as she had 
held her the previous night, and thanked God. The 
child understood, and did not blame her. 

That was their good-bye. Patricia Ellen did not 
count the little flurry of confetti and rice and good 
wishes in the Market Place, as the two-seater started 
on its way. She received congratulations and fare¬ 
wells with her usual smiling composure, and finally, the 
last guest gone, went to put away wedding presents 
and clear up generally, rather glad to be alone, and 
quite unaware of the fact that John Gideon, feeling, 
as he expressed it, like a lost dog, had asked Maurice 
to stay on and have supper, and that Mrs. Maurice 
had taken the invitation to include herself, which it 
did not. 

“ Go into the dining-room, will you? ” said John 
Gideon, rather taken aback; “ I’ve just got to sign 
some things in the office, but I won’t be ten minutes 
and Ellen’s there.” 

He really thought she was; having last seen her, 
a big apron tied over her wedding bravery, stacking 
up glass and silver to take indoors. She had, how¬ 
ever, gone on up to the drawing-room to the pres¬ 
ents, so that Mrs. Maurice and, incidentally, her 
husband, walked into a somewhat disarranged dining¬ 
room and sat there unwelcomed and alone. 

The lady was not, even on her entry, an espe¬ 
cially pleased woman. She had been deeply offended 
over the bridesmaid incident, for she had discussed 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


250 

probable costumes for her little girls with various 
friends, and it had not soothed her spirit to find 
that they were not wanted. She had been outraged 
by the general character of the wedding; not one 
atom of style or smartness; and the idea of inviting 
the assistants and those old women to meet decent 
people! Lastly and chiefly, though not avowedly, 
the notabilities of the day had ignored her, un¬ 
ashamedly preferring “ that woman.” The Lon¬ 
don titles had been introduced, certainly; Patricia 
Ellen had so far remembered herself; they had sus¬ 
tained five minutes of boredom anent the weather, 
and then returned to their hostess. This waiting added 
fuel to the fire, and by the time John Gideon returned, 
within his ten minutes, Mrs. Maurice was in a state of 
majestic anger. 

“ Oh, hasn’t Ellen come in? ” he greeted them. 
“ Sorry, thought she was here. Help yourself to 
whiskey, Maurice. I’ve been finishing up Phyllida’s 
marriage settlement; didn’t say anything much about 
it before, because I wanted it to be a surprise for the 
child when she started housekeeping; but I had the 
papers got ready and signed them to-night.” 

“ You are making a settlement on Phyllida? ” Mrs. 
Maurice’s voice was ominous. 

“ Yes,” said John Gideon cheerfully. (He was not 
quite so easy as he appeared, but: “ She’s going to 
make the deuce and all of a row,” he said to himself; 


MAY-DEW 


251 

“ so we’ll get some of it over before Ellen comes 
down.”) “ Yes, it’s all fixed up. I don’t see any 
sense in making people wait till you’re dead for money 
that you don’t in the least need; so I’ve deeded five 
thousand pounds to her and her children if she has any. 
She’ll have more when I peg out, of course; but I 
wanted her to have something now. Bill’s fairly well 
off for a young fellow, and he’s a strong, hefty chap, 
and a good future before him and all that; still, human 
life’s uncertain, and I’d rather feel the child was safe. 
I don’t suppose Ellen’s first husband had any notion 
that he was going to die when he did, and leave them 
unprovided for. You never know your luck in this 
world.” (“ And that’s done it,” he added under his 
breath.) 

Mrs. Maurice uprose in her wrath. 

“ You mean to say,” she almost squealed, “ that 
you are giving five thousand pounds, five thousand 
pounds , to that — that — brat, who has absolutely no 
claims on you of relationship or anything else. Money 
that Maurice has helped you to earn, and that if you 
had no use for it in the business, ought to have gone 
back to his children! It’s nothing short of dishonesty, 
John Gideon.” 

“ Maurice has had his share of everything,” said 
John hotly. 

“ Yes, of course,” agreed that gentleman. “ Rose 
doesn’t mean that, you know. A mother always thinks 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


252 

her babies have first call. But seriously, old man, 
don’t you think you are being unnecessarily lavish? I 
don’t want to butt in, but it’s a pretty big sum.” 

“ I don’t see that anyone’s got any call to lay out 
how I shall spend my money.” John was becoming 
irate. “ Maurice and I have always shared equally, 
although he’s the junior partner; you and he have had 
the same amount to spend as Ellen and I have, and 
the same chance of saving; more, in fact, for you 
haven’t had such big premises to keep up.” 

“ Ellen and you, indeed! No, it’s no good your 
trying to hush me up, Maurice; I’ve stood as much 
as I intend to stand; I don’t care if he is the senior 
partner. Ellen and you! Are you having the im¬ 
pertinence to insinuate that I am to be satisfied with 
what satisfies her? Be content with a Secondary 

School for my children-” 

“ And be darned glad if they turn out as well as 

hers-” from John; he was not going to take this 

sort of thing lying down. 

“ I, brought up as I have been, and she, accustomed 

to pigging along in a little public house-” the 

lady’s gentility was crumbling; “ Because you were 
fool enough to let a common, uneducated woman trick 

you into marrying her--” 

“Keep your tongue off my wife, confound you! ” 
“ Rose,” from Maurice ineffectually, “ don’t you 
think-” 





MAY-DEW 


253 

“ You choose to lower yourself to her level, and then 
sneer at us because we try to keep up our position. 
Live as though you were no better than a shop assistant, 
and yet waste money like water on that woman’s minx 
of a child. Art training, indeed, when she ought to 
have been a servant or a barmaid! And then cap 
everything with giving her Maurice’s money.” 

“ I did not,” John shouted. “ You make game of us 
and our plain ways, my lady, and you’ve got a mighty 
lot to say about money and who’s earned it. I’ll tell 
you this much; the money I’m giving Phyllida wasn’t 
earned by me or Maurice; it was earned by Phyllida’s 
mother, same as all the extra you have had the last 
five years or so; same as what’s going to build your 
fool house. And for the position you make such an 
ass talk about, Ellen’s folks were plain farming people, 
the same as ours, who weren’t ashamed to own that 
they worked with their hands for a living; and her 
husband from all accounts was a gentleman and a 
genius, if he was poor.” 

“ A gentleman! Is it likely a gentleman would have 
married her? If he was one, and such a great man 
as you make out, the chances are that he didn’t. 
Artists don’t usually marry the women who look after 
them. If you said that she was his model, and he 
got her into trouble, you’d be nearer the mark, I 
shouldn’t wonder.” 

John brought his fist down on the dining-table with 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


254 

a crash. “ That’ll do! ” he roared. “ I’ve never re¬ 
fused a meal to anyone in my house before, but I do 
now. I won’t have you here, d’you hear? Clear 
out! ” 

“ One moment, please.” 

They turned, breathlessly. Patricia Ellen stood 
in the doorway, and John gasped at the sight of her. 
Phyllida had insisted on choosing a frock for her for 
the wedding, indignantly rejecting coats and skirts; 
and, wearing a gown of dull, rich purple, with touches 
of steel, her whitening hair gleaming as the September 
evening light caught it, she was indeed a somewhat 
regal-looking individual. Like many women of her 
large-boned, massive type, she had been a plain, 
pleasant-faced girl, who grew better looking with years, 
till now she was very near being handsome; while 
long years of authority had given her tall figure an 
air of command which was decidedly impressive, and 
which made Mrs. Maurice look insignificant and futile 

She swept into the room and stood at the head of 
the table, facing the other woman. 

“ I heard some of your discussion as I came down¬ 
stairs,” she said, her voice deep with anger; “and I 
gathered that the settlement you intend making on 
Phyllida, John, is a very large one. I had no idea of 
that, though it is generous and kind of you in the 
extreme, you have already done so much for her, 
that I think I should prefer you did not do it. But 


MAY-DEW 


255 

why you and your wife/’ turning round on Maurice, 
“ should think it part of your business to decide how 
my husband shall spend his money, I don’t know. 
And with regard to your other impertinences, no one 
but a vulgar-minded and under-bred woman would 
think or say such things; but as I do not choose to 
have such remarks made about myself or my daughter, 
I tell you for your better information, that I was mar¬ 
ried to Timothy Haddendon in Avebury Parish Church 
on June 30th, twenty-five years ago; that Phyllida was 
born four years later; that I was never a model to my 
husband or anyone else, and that if I hear of your 
making such statements elsewhere I will have you sued 
for slander.” 

Mrs. Maurice choked with rage. 

“ I don’t think it would pay you to bring your affairs 
too much into the light of day in a law court,” she 
hooted. “ You might not want some of the fine friends 
you’ve scraped acquaintance with to know that your 
father was the landlord of a village public-house, and 
that you came to John here as housekeeper when he 
was half mad with disappointment over his broken 
engagement-” 

“ And a fat lot you did to help me get over it,” John 
snapped at her. 

Mrs. Maurice disregarded him and continued loftily 
— “ And that you inveigled him, a boy of half your 
age, into marrying you, when he hardly knew what he 



PATRICIA ELLEN 


256 

was doing; and have swindled every penny out of him 
that you can ever since.” 

“ I really think this has gone far enough,” Maurice 
interposed in his blandest voice. “ Rose is a little over¬ 
tired and upset, and doesn’t quite realise what she is 
saying. John would naturally like to give a present 
to his step-daughter; no one could say a word against 
it, if it is done moderately and sensibly and openly. 
But I have always found you very fair dealing over 
money matters, Ellen, and I think you will agree with 
me that five thousand pounds is too much to take out 
of the business for an unnecessary and extraneous ob¬ 
ject. Because — although Rose is over-wrought, and 

exaggerates-” there was a half-veiled threat 

in his silky voice —“ still, there does always remain 
the question; why did you marry John? ” 

“ Fair dealing in money! How many thousands 
has my fair dealing in money put into your pocket, 
Maurice Gideon? And why did I marry John? I 
married him to get a certain home for Phyllida. Dear 
God in Heaven! ” blazed Patricia Ellen, exasperated 
into plain speaking at last. “ Do you imagine that a 
woman who had been Timothy Haddendon’s loved wife 
for five years would ever have married either of you 
for any other reason? D’you think I’ve enjoyed it? 
John coming home drunk four nights out of seven? 
Oh, I know he doesn’t now, but he did then. You and 
your friends making game of me because I was unedu- 



MAY-DEW 


257 


cated! I was good enough to earn money for you to 
spend, I suppose, but not for anything else. And I’m 
expected to put up with your tempers and your sneers 
and your patronage and your lies, and go on working 
morning, noon and night to pay for your extravagance, 
while you grudge Phyllida the very clothes she wears! 
I’ve had enough of it and of all of you! ” 

Mrs. Maurice turned to her husband; she had re¬ 
gained something of her Manner, though her face was 
blotched and her hands trembled. 

“ I think we had better go, Maurice. I am not 
accustomed to this sort of atmosphere. We have heard 
some interesting statements about Mrs. Gideon’s 
reason for her second marriage. Perhaps John will 
also give us information as to why he wishes to pay 
over this fortune to Phyllida unknown to his wife? 
Whether it is hush money to cover his past relations 
with the young woman, or-” 

She got no further. John Gideon had been a noted 
“ field ” in his cricketing days; and without a mo¬ 
ment’s delay he fielded Mrs. Maurice. One large, un¬ 
gentle hand on her back, another planted firmly over 
her mouth, he shook her soundly, ran her rapidly 
through the closed shop to the assistants’ entrance, in 
full view of a dozen or more girls, and so into the 
Market Place, where he deposited her on the pave¬ 
ment with a jerk that made her teeth chatter. 

“There you are! ” he gurgled, his fresh, pink face 



PATRICIA ELLEN 


258 

mottled and apoplectic in hue; “ and if ever you dare 
to put your nose inside my door again, I’ll have you 
turned out by the police, d’you hear? You filthy liar! 
Maurice,” to his brother, who had run bleating behind; 
“ take that woman home! ” 

Then, as Maurice began vociferous protest — Mrs. 
Maurice was beyond anything but gasps —“ If that 
she devil comes near me again, I shall do her a mis¬ 
chief; take her off, and clear out, both of you! ” bran¬ 
dishing a beefy fist. As Mrs. Maurice said, he was a 
very common sort of man, John Gideon. 

He turned, and went back to the dining-room, mop¬ 
ping his face, and becoming aware, in transit, of in¬ 
terested feminine eyes peering round doors at his prog¬ 
ress. 

“ Exit Mrs. Maurice,” he said heatedly. “ Good 
Lord! what a woman! a Church worker, and to have 
a mind like that! ” 

“ She’ll come round, I expect,” said Patricia Ellen 
absently. She was still standing in the same spot as 
when John started his cricket match. “ She must have 
been upset about something; of course she knows all 
that isn’t true, and she couldn’t have really meant it; 
she’ll apologize in a day or two.” 

“ I’ll damn well see she doesn’t,” John exploded. 
“ Come here and accuse me of carrying on with my 
own step-daughter, and you of swindling! She’ll never 
set foot in this house again — I’ll take good care of 
that! ” 


MAY-DEW 


259 

There was a pause: Patricia Ellen stood idly twist¬ 
ing and plaiting a cut steel chain she was wearing; her 
sudden anger had gone, and she felt unutterably tired 
and apathetic. John broke the silence at last. 

“ Ellen,” he asked, “ have you a photo of your first 
husband? ” 

The question was so far from what she had ex¬ 
pected that she had to bring her thoughts back with’ 
a jerk to reply that she had a sketch. 

“ Could I see it? ” 

She went upstairs, wondering; her apathy wearing 
off again, and returned with Carbonnel’s little pastel 
in her hand. John Gideon lighted the gas and studied 
it; the brilliant eyes; the thin, keen, sensitive face, 
with its lurking humour, and its air of physical 
delicacy. 

“ The child’s marvellously like him,” he said 
thoughtfully. 

“ She is,” said Patricia Ellen, “ in every way. Some¬ 
times if I shut my eyes, I could think it was Timothy 
talking. He had that same little laughing way with 
him, and the same knack of making friends.” 

“ And he died when he was young like this? ” in¬ 
dicating the pastel again. 

“ Died when he was young like that! ” Patricia 
Ellen struck her hand against the table. “ Died,” she 
repeated bitterly, “ up there in the snow and cold, 
because we had no money to go anywhere else; died 
unknown and poor, and suffering, when the price of one 


2 60 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


of his pictures now would have saved him; died and 
left me and Phyllida alone.” 

John looked at her intently. They were both roused 
above themselves that night; he, to unusual intuition 
and sympathy; she, to unusual freedom of speech. He 
ventured further questions, feeling his way, and 
learned by degrees the story of that week of horror 
in the hills; learned of the years at Fullerton’s, of the 
terror and heart-gripping fear that had ended them; 
learned of the fury of struggle and pain that accom¬ 
panied her second marriage, and learning, learned also, 
at long last, to understand and respect. 

“ I don’t know* what you’ll want now,” Patricia 
Ellen finished. “ But I’m willing to do anything you 
wish; stay or go, whichever you like. You’ve done 
your share of the bargain, and more; and I made up 
my mind that I’d leave you free in every other way.” 

John searched for words. 

“ There’s only one thing I find hard to get over,” he 
said slowly. “ You took from me my chance of a 
son, there’ll never be another John Gideon to carry on 
after me; and that’s a big thing to lose. But for the 
rest, I married to spite a woman, you married to save 
a child; ’twouldn’t take long to choose the better 
motive. 

“ Ellen,” he went on again, “ couldn’t we go on to¬ 
gether in a sort of partnership way? There can’t be 
the feeling between us that there is ordinarily between 
husband and wife: but we have neither of us got so 


MAY-DEW 


261 


much out of life that we can afford to lose what we 
have left. There's a good deal we could enjoy together 
if we could be partners and friends as Maurice and I 
used to be, and never will be again-” 

“ I have brought that on you, too," said Patricia 
Ellen sadly. 

“ No, it was his marriage did that; if the break 
hadn’t come like this, it would have come some other 
way. Rose came between us from the very first. But 
we could be friends like that, couldn’t we, Ellen? 
Sharing interests and work? I think we might get a 
good deal of happiness that way." 

“ I would be very glad," said Ellen gratefully. 
Cirencester was all the home she had now; its interests 
were hers, and she and the man before her had a good 
deal in common. John Gideon had spoken more truly 
than he knew, when he had told Mrs. Maurice that 
they both came from the same kind of folks. More¬ 
over, as he said, they had neither of them got so much 
out of life, that they could lightly lose what they had. 

“ And," John went on wistfully, “ if you will let me 
feel that I share Phyllida, that I can look on her as 
partly mine; that you won’t be minding if she’s fond 
of me, too, and that I may plan and do things for her 
as well as you; could you, Ellen? Let her be my little 
maid really? ’’ 

Standing there, she made her last concession, giving 
fully and freely, as had been her wont all her life, and 
her father’s before her, and they clasped hands across 



262 


PATRICIA ELLEN 


the table, seriously and quietly; two friends, knowing 
the best and the worst of each other, and knowing, too, 
that since life holds much that is bitter, many broken 
pieces that will never be whole, many tangles that will 
never be unravelled this side of the grave, it is as well 
to keep a friendship, which, if not of a full noontide 
glow and passion, is at least of a quiet and unvarying 
light that will outlast many storms, and soften much 
that is rough and hard to tread. 























































































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